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LIOLOGY 


EDUC. 

PSYCH. 

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THE  LIBRARY 

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THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 


1  lie  John  ).  mtd  H anna  M.  McManus 

NfoRKis  N.  and  CiiF.si  ky  V.  Young 

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« 


TELEPATHY 

GENUINE  AND  FRAUDULENT 
BY 

W.  W.  BAGGALLY 

Member  of  the  Council  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research 


WITH  A  PREFACE  BY 

SIR  OLIVER  LODGE,  F.R.S. 


THE  MARLOWE  COMPANY 

CHICAGO,  ILL. 


Copyright  1918 

By  the 

MARLOWE  COMPANY 

CHICAGO.  ILL. 


GIFT 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

My  friend,  Mr.  W.  W.  Baggally,  an  experienced 
investigator  of  super-normal  phenomena,  has  set  down 
some  of  his  experiences  in  connection  with  the  subject 
of  Telepathy,  and  I  heartily  commend  his  book  to  the 
public  as  the  record  of  a  careful,  conscientious,  and 
exceptionally  skilled  and  critical  investigator.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  find  anyone  more  competent  by 
training  and  capacity  to  examine  into  the  genuineness 
of  these  subtle  and  elusive  phenomena,  which  yet  are  of 
the  utmost  importance  in  the  development  of  psycho- 
logical science.  Telepathy,  or  the  direct  action  of 
mind  on  mind  apart  from  the  ordinary  channels  of 
sense,  opens  a  new  chapter;  it  is  not  a  coping-stone 
completing  an  erection,  but  a  foundation-stone  on 
which  to  build. 

OLIVER  J.  LODGE. 


941 


CONTENTS 

PART  I 

GENUINE  TELEPATHY 

PAGE 

Experimental  Telepathy   7 

Spontaneous  Telepathy 21 

Telepathy  Between  Human  Beings  and  Animals. .  31 

PART  II 

FRAUDULENT   TELEPATHY 

Accounts  of  Cases 35 

Description  of  Various  Methods  Used  by  Public 
Performers  for  Effecting  Their  So-called  Trans- 
mission of  Thought 52 

PART  III 

THE   ZANCIGS 

Public  Experiments  61 

Private  Experiments 63 

Experiments  before  Committees   72 

Importance  of  Establishing  Genuine  Telepathy  as 
a  Scientific  Fact  80 

5 


TELEPATHY 

PART  I 

GENUINE  TELEPATHY 

Sir  William  F.  Barrett,  one  of  the  founders  of  the 
Society  for  Psychical  Research,  more  than  forty  years 
ago  tried  some  experiments  which  led  him  to  believe 
that  something  then  new  to  science,  which  he  provi- 
sionally called  "thought  transference"  and  which  is 
now  known  as  "telepathy,"  really  existed. 

At  the  first  general  meeting  of  the  Society,  on  July 
17,  1882,  he  read  a  paper  entitled  "First  Report  on 
Mind  Reading." 

Since  that  date  the  Society  has  carried  out  a  great 
number  of  experiments  which  tend  to  show  that  telep- 
athy is  a  scientific  fact.  The  evidence  for  its  existence 
is  twofold — that  which  can  be  gathered  experimen- 
tally, and  that  which  arises  spontaneously.  To 
the  first  category  belong  those  experiments  in  the 
transmission  of  the  images  of  drawings  or  diagrams 
by  means  of  an  effort  of  the  will  of  a  person  known 
as  the  agent  to  the  mind  of  another  person  designated 

7 


8  TELEPATHY 

the  percipient,  when  the  transmission  is  carried  out 
otherwise  than  through  the  ordinary  channel  of  the 
senses.  To  the  second  category  belong  those  hallu- 
cinations of  seeing  a  person  at  the  moment  of  death 
or  at  a  crisis,  evidence  for  which  has  been  obtained 
abundantly  by  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research 
and  has  been  embodied  in  the  work  Phaulasms  of  the 
Lii'ing,  and  in  the  Census  of  Hallucinations — a  report 
on  which  appeared  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Society  in 
1894. 

There  are  several  theories  to  explain  the  action 
of  telepathy.  The  first  compares  it  to  wireless  teleg- 
raphy. On  this  hypothesis  it  is  supposed  that  it  is 
due  to  ethereal  wave  action :  Thought  causes  motion 
in  the  brain  cells  of  the  agent,  the  cells  then  impart 
motion  to  the  surrounding  ether  in  the  form  of  waves 
which  impinge  on  the  brain  cells  of  the  percipient  and 
give  rise  to  a  corresi>onding  thought  to  that  which 
started  the  ethereal  wave  motion. 

This  theory  offers  great  difficulties.  An  opponent 
to  it  points  out  that  "A  wireless  message  is  trans- 
mitted by  a  succession  of  single  ethereal  wave  impulses 
produced  hy  the  electric  sparks  at  the  starting  station 
and  received  by  the  coherer  at  the  receiving  station, 
whereas  a  diagram  to  be  transmitted  would  require 
a  number  of  brain-waves  produced  simultaneously 
and  arranged  in  the  form  of  the  diagram." 

Another  mode  of  putting  the  matter  recently  ad- 


TELEPATHY  9 

vanced  is  that  the  agent  does  not  transmit  his  thought, 
but  that  the  percipient  reads  clairvoyantly  what  is  in 
the  agent's  mind. 

There  is  also  the  spirituaUstic  theory.  It  is  asserted 
that  an  external  entity,  or  spirit,  conveys  the  images 
or  thoughts  from  one  mind  to  another. 

Another  theory  is  that  telepathy  takes  place  in  the 
subconscious  mind,  and  that  the  subconscious  mind 
of  the  agent  is  in  communication  with  the  subconscious 
mind  of  the  percipient  by  means  of  the  universal  mind 
underlying  all  things  and  of  which  individual  subcon- 
scious minds  form  part. 

Not  one  of  these  theories  has  been  accepted  as 
proved  by  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research.  In 
cases  of  spontaneous  telepathy  it  is  now  generally 
believed  that  the  appearance  of  a  person  at  the  time 
of  death  or  at  a  crisis  is  not  caused  by  an  objective 
bodily  ghost,  but  arises  from  a  telepathic  impact 
from  the  agent  formulating  itself  into  his  image  in 
the  mind  of  the  percipient. 

In  the  case  of  two  persons  seeing  an  apparition  at 
the  same  time,  this  may  be  due  to  the  two  percipients 
receiving  each,  separately,  a  telepathic  impression,  or 
there  may  be  only  one  percipient  who  telepathically 
impresses  the  hallucination  on  the  mind  of  the  second 
person. 

I  will  now  proceed  to  relate  some  cases  of  telepathy 
which  have  come  under  my  personal  observation.  My 


10  TELEPATHY 

first  experiment  in  the  transmission  of  images  of 
drawings  and  diagrams  took  place  in  the  rooms  of  the 
Society  for  Psychical  Research  in  May,  1902.  A 
private  lady,  Miss  M.  Telbin,  acted  as  percipient,  and 
I  acted  as  agent.  There  were  present  at  the  time  Mr. 
J.  G.  Piddington,  Honorary  Secretary  of  the  Society, 
and  Mr.  Thomas,  the  then  Acting  Secretary, 

During  the  first  experiment  Miss  Telbin,  who  was 
a  stranger  to  me,  sat  with  her  back  towards  a  large 
opaque  screen.  In  front  of  her  stood  a  small  table 
upon  which  rested  a  crystal  ball.  She  was  asked  to 
gaze  at  the  crystal  and  to  describe  any  vision  that 
might  appear  to  form  itself  therein.  I  may  parenthet- 
ically remark  that  the  object  of  cr>-stal-gazing  is  to 
concentrate  the  mind  and  to  withdraw  it  from  out- 
ward influences.  The  vision  seen  in  the  crystal  does 
not  exist  objectively,  but  only  in  the  mind  of  the 
seer.  On  the  other  side  of  the  screen,  entirely  hidden 
from  the  view  of  Miss  Telbin,  sat  ^^r.  Piddington 
and  myself.  This  gentleman  proceeded  to  take  from 
a  box,  which  was  behind  the  screen  and  on  the  floor 
between  his  and  my  chairs,  various  articles,  and  to 
hand  them  silently,  one  at  a  time,  to  me.  I  then  con- 
centrated my  thoughts  successively  on  each  article. 
Miss  Telbin  gave  an  account  of  what  she  saw  in  the 
crystal,  and  Mr.  Thomas,  who  sat  in  such  a  position 
that  both  Mr.  Piddington  and  myself  were  hidden 
from  his  view,  took  notes  of  what  occurred. 


TELEPATHY  II' 

The  first  article  handed  me  was  a  Windsor  Maga- 
zine, on  the  cover  of  which  there  was  an  engraving  of 
Windsor  Castle.  I  concentrated  my  thoughts  on  this 
engraving,  and  Miss  Telbin  then  gave  a  description  of 
the  vision  that  presented  itself  to  her  mental  view. 

She  first  observed  that  she  could  see  trees  on  the  left 
side  of  the  picture,  and  cottages  also  on  the  left,  and 
that  there  was  water. 

These  details  were  correct  so  far  as  they  went,  but 
the  subsequent  details  that  she  gave  were  incorrect,  and 
the  experiment  was  abandoned  as  a  failure.  I  then 
replaced  the  magazine  in  the  box  from  which  it  had 
'been  taken,  so  that  Miss  Telbin  had  no  opportunity  of 
seeing  the  magazine  during  the  experiment  nor  after. 

Other  experiments  were  being  tried  when  Miss  Tel- 
bin spontaneously  said  that  she  had  had  a  vision  of 
Windsor  Castle. 

This  experiment  may  be  regarded  as  a  case  of 
deferred  telepathy. 

Another  experiment  with  the  same  lady,  in  which 
simultaneous  double  telepathy  occurred,  is  of  better 
evidential  value. 

Miss  Telbin  again  sat  with  her  back  to  the  screen, 
and  instead  of  the  crystal  a  piece  of  paper  and  a  pencil 
were  placed  on  the  table  in  front  of  her. 

This  time  Mr.  Thomas  and  I  sat  behind  the  screen 
hidden  from  her  view,  and  Mr.  J.  G.  Piddington  took 
notes.     Mr.   Thomas   and    I    acted   as   simultaneous 


12 


TELEPATHY 


agents.  We  each  held  a  small  piece  of  cardboard  with 
a  diagram  on  it  known  to  the  agent  viewing  it,  but  not 
to  the  other  agent.  These  diagrams  belonged  to  the 
Society  for  Psychical  Research  and  had  not  been  seen 
by  Mr.  Thomas  nor  by  me  previous  to  the  experiment. 
They  were  in  a  box  which  was  at  our  feet  behind  the 
screen.  We  each  took  a  diagram  from  the  box,  taking 
care  that  we  did  not  see  each  other's  diagram. 

We  concentrated  our  minds  on  our  respective  dia- 
grams, and  Miss  Telbin  drew  her  impressions  on  the 
piece  of  paper  in  front  of  her.  The  following  drawings 
show  the  results : — 


Mr.  Baggally's 
Diagram. 


& 

Miss  Tklbin's 
Drawing. 


Mr.  Thomas's 
Diagram. 


Miss  Tklbin's 
Drawing. 


At  the  time  that  Miss  Telbin  got  the  impression  of 
the  diagram  with  three  sections,  she  made  the  remark 
that  it  looked  like  three  leaves. 


TELEPATHY  13 

The  correspondence  between  the  drawings  and  the 
diagrams  is  very  great,  and  difficult  to  account  for  by 
chance. 

The  following  points  have  to  be  considered.  First, 
that  Miss  Telbin  only  made  two  drawings  and  not 
many  from  which  two  might  have  been  selected  in 
which  there  was  a  resemblance  to  the  diagrams.  Sec- 
ondly, that  Mr.  Thomas's  diagram  was  correctly  repro- 
duced although  in  a  reversed  position  (the  reversal  of 
a  figure  sometimes  happens  in  experiments  in  telep- 
athy). Thirdly,  that  my  diagram  of  three  triangles, 
although  not  reproduced  in  the  form  of  triangles,  was 
drawn  correctly  as  regards  there  being  three  sections, 
and  that  the  relative  position  of  the  sections  was  given 
correctly.  Fourthly,  that  Miss  Telbin  had  not  pre- 
viously seen  any  of  the  diagrams,  and  therefore  the 
chances  against  her  being  able  to  hit  upon  any  diagram 
which  was  then  being  used  were  very  great.  Fifthly, 
that  the  chances  against  her  being  able  to  hit  upon 
two  diagrams  simultaneously  were  even  greater. 

The  explanation  that  the  result  might  have  been  due 
to  collusion  between  the  persons  experimenting  of 
course  cannot  be  entertained,  at  least  by  myself,  who 
was  one  of  the  experimenters. 

It  was  not  possible  for  the  percipient  to  see  through 
the  large  screen  which  was  behind  her,  and  there  were 
no  mirrors  in  the  room  in  which  the  small  diagrams 
could  have  been  reflected.     No  word  was  spoken  to 


14  TELEPATHY 

give  her  the  slightest  clue.  These  two  successful  tele- 
pathic exjK-rinients  led  to  further  ones  at  a  distance 
between  this  lady  and  myself. 

It  will  be  of  interest  to  insert  here  an  account  of  an 
experiment  in  telepathy,  similar  to  the  one  1  have  just 
described,  between  two  agents  and  one  percipient, 
which  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  carried  out  in  the  year  1884. 

When  the  experiment  was  tried  with  Miss  Telbin, 
Mr.  Thomas,  and  myself  I  was  not  aware  that  Sir 
OHver  Lodge  had  already  tried  an  experiment  of  a  like 
nature. 

Sir  Oliver  Lodge's  Account 

"My  own  first  actual  experience  of  thought  transfer- 
ence, or  experimental  telepathy,  was  obtained  in  the 
years  1883  and  1884  at  Liverpool,  when  I  was  invited 
by  Mr.  Malcolm  Guthrie  of  that  city  to  join  in  an 
investigation  which  he  was  conducting  with  the  aid  of 
one  or  two  persons  who  had  turned  out  to  be  sensitive, 
from  among  the  employees  of  the  large  drapery  firm  of 
George  Henry  Lee  &  Co. 

"A  large  number  of  these  experiments  had  been  con- 
ducted before  I  was  asked  to  join,  throughout  the 
spring  and  autumn  of  1S83,  but  it  is  better  for  me  to 
adhere  strictly  to  my  own  experience  and  to  relate  only 
those  experiments  over  which  I  had  control. 

"Most  of  these  experiments  were  confirmations  of 
the  kind  of  thing  that  had  been  observed  by  other 


TELEPATHY  15 

experimenters.  But  one  experiment  which  I  tried  was 
definitely  novel,  and,  as  it  seems  to  me,  important; 
since  it  clearly  showed  that  when  two  agents  are  acting, 
each  contributes  to  the  effect,  and  that  the  result  is 
due,  not  to  one  alone,  but  to  both  combined.  The 
experiment  is  thus  described  by  me  in  the  columns  of 
Nature,  vol.  xxx.,  page  145,  for  June  12,  1884: 

"An  Experiment  in  Thought  Transference 

"Those  of  your  readers  who  are  interested  in  the 
subject  of  thought  transference,  now  being  investi- 
gated, may  be  glad  to  hear  of  a  little  experiment  which 
I  recently  tried  here.  The  series  of  experiments  was 
originated  and  carried  on  in  this  city  by  Mr.  Malcolm 
Guthrie,  and  he  has  prevailed  on  me,  on  Dr.  Herdman, 
and  on  one  or  two  other  more  or  less  scientific  wit- 
nesses, to  be  present  on  several  occasions,  critically  to 
examine  the  conditions,  and  to  impose  any  fresh  ones 
that  we  thought  desirable.  I  need  not  enter  into  par- 
ticulars, but  I  will  just  say  that  the  conditions  under 
which  apparent  transference  of  thought  occurs  from 
one  or  rfiore  persons,  steadfastly  thinking,  to  another  in 
the  same  room  blindfold  and  wholly  disconnected  from 
the  others,  seem  to  me  absolutely  satisfactory,  and  such 
as  to  preclude  the  possibility  of  conscious  collusion  on 
the  one  hand  or  unconscious  muscular  indication  on 
the  other. 

"One   evening  last   week — after  two  thinkers,   or 


i6  TELEPATHY 

agents,  had  been  several  times  successful  in  instilling 
the  idea  of  some  object  or  drawing,  at  which  they  were 
looking,  into  the  mind  of  the  blindfold  person,  or  per- 
cipient— I  brought  into  the  room  a  double  opaque  sheet 
of  thick  paper  with  a  square  drawn  on  one  side  and  a 
St.  Andrew's  cross  or  X  on  the  other,  and  silently 
arranged  it  between  the  two  agents  so  that  each  looked 
on  one  side  without  any  notion  of  what  was  on  the 
other.  The  percipient  was  not  informed  in  any  way 
that  a  novel  modification  was  being  made;  and,  as 
usual,  there  was  no  contact  of  any  sort  or  kind — a  clear 
space  of  several  feet  existing  between  each  of  the  three 
people.  I  thought  that  by  this  variation  I  should  decide 
whether  one  of  the  two  agents  was  more  active  than 
the  other;  or,  supposing  them  about  equal,  whether  two 
ideas  in  two  separate  minds  could  be  fused  into  one  by 
the  percipient. 

"In  a  ver}'  short  time  the  percipient  made  the  fol- 
lowing remarks,  every  one  else  being  silent:  'The 
thing  won't  keep  still.'  'I  seem  to  see  things  moving 
about.'  'First  I  see  a  thing  up  there,  and  then  one 
down  there.'  'I  can't  see  either  distinctly.'  The  object 
was  then  hidden,  and  the  percipient  was  told  to  take 
off  the  bandage  and  to  draw  the  impression  in  her 
mind  on  a  sheet  of  paper.  She  drew  a  square,  and 
then  said,  'There  was  the  other  thing  as  well,'  and  drew 
a  cross  inside  the  square  from  comer  to  comer,  saying 
afterwards,  'I  don't  know  what  made  me  put  it  inside.' 


TELEPATHY 


17 


X 


Okiginals. 


Kl 


Rbpkoduction. 


*'The  experiment  is  no  more  conclusive  as  evidence 
than  fifty  others  that  I  have  seen  at  Mr.  Guthrie's,  but 
it  seems  to  me  somewhat  interesting  that  two  minds 
should  produce  a  disconnected  sort  of  impression  on 
the  mind  of  the  percipient,  quite  different  from  the 
single  impression  which  we  had  usually  obtained  when 
two  agents  were  both  looking  at  the  same  thing.  Once, 
for  instance  (to  take  a  nearly  corresponding  case  under 
those  conditions),  when  the  object  was  a  rude  drawing 
of  the  main  lines  in  a  Union  Jack,  the  figure  was  re- 
produced by  the  percipient  as  a  whole  without  misgiv- 
ing; except,  indeed,  that  she  expressed  a  doubt  as  to 
whether  its  middle  horizontal  line  were  present  or  not, 
and  ultimately  omitted  it." 

As  I  have  said,  the  two  successful  telepathic  experi- 
ments which  I  have  described,  and  which  took  place  in 
the  rooms  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research,  led 
to  further  experiments  at  a  distance  between  Miss  Tel- 
bin  and  myself. 


^ 


OltlGINAL. 


Rbproduction. 


i8 


TELEPATHY 


At  7  P.M. 

I  drew  the  followiog  diagram 


At  7.10  P.M. 
I    fixed    my 
flower 


atteotioo  00    a 


At  7.20  P.M. 

I  looked  at  a  pair  of  opera- 
glasses,  at  which  I  gazed  first 
lengthwise 

00 

then  sideways 


M 


At  7  P.M. 
Miss  Tblbin's  drawings 


hi  7.10  P.M. 

Miss  Telbin  obtained  several 
incorrect  scrawls,  but  amongst 
them  one  c{\  under  which 
she  bad  ^  written  the 
words  \ 

"First  impression" 


At  7.20  P.M. 

Miss       Tblbin's  drawings 

were—  ^;:^ 

First  impression  ^/ 

A  series  of  crescents  /'V^ 
And  this  drawing  r\'^^ 
Also  four  drawings  \ 

crouriaDCJD 


TELEPATHY  19 

It  was  arranged  that  we  should  sit  on  certain  days 
in  the  week,  and  that  at  a  fixed  hour  I  should  act  as 
agent  and  transmit  to  her  my  thoughts,  she  being  at 
the  time  in  her  residence  in  West  Hampstead,  and  I 
in  Kensington.  The  distance  between  these  localities 
as  the  crow  flies  is  four  miles.  The  result  of  our  first 
sitting,  which  took  place  on  May  20,  1902,  is  shown  on 
the  preceding  page. 

There  was  no  possibility  that  the  agent  or  the  per- 
cipient could  have  copied  the  drawings,  as  the  letters 
embodying  them  that  we  wrote  to  each  other  were 
posted  on  the  evening  of  the  same  day  and  received  by 
the  first  post  the  following  morning,  having  crossed  in 
the  post. 

Telepathy  was  clearly  indicated  in  this  experiment. 

We  continued  trying  experiments  for  some  months 
after,  but  did  not  get  such  good  results  as  at  the  begin- 
ning. On  one  occasion,  however,  we  obtained  a  suc- 
cessful negative  result.  I  was  not  feeling  well,  and  did 
not  fix  my  attention  on  any  object.  On  the  following 
morning  Miss  Telbin's  letter  said,  "I  could  get  nothing 
from  you  last  night."  It  was,  to  say  the  least,  curious 
that  she  should  not  have  received  an  impression  on  the 
only  night  that  I  had  not  attempted  to  experiment. 

On  another  occasion,  when  Miss  Telbin  was  in  Lon- 
don and  I  in  Folkestone,  I  arranged  to  transmit  to  her 
the  impression  of  a  diagram  on  a  certain  day  at  8  p.  m. 
It  chanced  that  on  that  evening  there  was  a  perform- 


20  TELEPATHY 

ance  at  the  theater,  at  which  my  wife  wished  to  be 
present.  I  therefore  decided  to  telegraph  to  Miss  Tel- 
bin  that  I  would  be  unable  to  try  the  experiment  that 
night,  but  after  a  good  deal  of  hesitation  I  changed  my 
mind,  and  thought  that  I  would  endeavor  to  transmit 
the  impression  of  the  diagram  on  my  way  to  the  the- 
ater. The  letter  that  I  received  from  Miss  Telbin  the 
next  day  was  to  this  effect : 

"I  got  a  good  deal  of  writing  last  night  which  was 
illegible,  but  amongst  it  I  read  the  words  'going  out' 
and  'rain.'  " 

Now  this  may  be  a  mere  coincidence,  but  it  was 
strange  that  the  words  "going  out"  should  correctly 
represent  the  idea  that  was  in  my  mind  during  a  great 
part  of  the  preceding  day.  I  had  much  worried,  hesi- 
tating whether  I  should  telegraph  or  not. 

The  result  appears  to  indicate  the  transmission  of 
my  mental  state.  The  word  "rain"  represented  cor- 
rectly the  state  of  the  weather  at  Folkestone,  but,  as 
it  often  rains  in  England,  this  was  of  no  evidential 
value. 

In  regard  to  spontaneous  telepathy  I  may  bring 
before  the  reader  two  cases  which  I  personally  investi- 
gated, the  percipient  in  the  first  case  being  a  gentleman 
who  belonged  to  a  circle  which  regularly  met  for  the 


TELEPATHY  21 

study  of  psychic  phenomena,  and  of  which  circle  I  was 
a  member. 

The  percipient,  Mr.  John  Policy,  gave  me  an  account 
of  his  vision  as  follows : 

"At  a  seance  held  within  sound  of  Big  Ben  on  May 
8, 1901,  there  were  present  Airs.  E.  V.  M.,  Mr.  Thomas 
Atwood,  and  myself.  As  Mr.  Atwood  resumed  his 
seat  after  delivering  an  address  (about  8.30  p.  m.)  I 
became  aware  of  a  vision  which  presented  itself  as 
being  some  five  feet  distant  from  me,  and  displayed 
part  of  the  interior  of  a  room,  namely,  that  part  where 
the  stove  stood.  The  fire  in  the  stove  was  small  and 
dull,  and  close  beside  it  was  an  overturned  chair.  In 
front  of  the  fire  was  something  that  looked  like  a  fire- 
guard or  clothes-horse,  but  this  was  not  clear  to  me. 
Playing,  or  climbing  over  this  article,  was  a  child,  who 
fell  forward,  and  when  it  regained  its  feet  I  noticed 
that  its  dress  was  on  fire.  I  made  no  reference  to  the 
matter  at  the  time,  as  I  had  an  impression  that  the  vi- 
sion might  be  connected  with  some  occurrence  in  the 
family  of  Mrs.  M.,  and  I  was  averse  to  mentioning  it 
for  fear  of  awakening  sad  memories.  Shortly  after- 
wards the  whole  vision  was  repeated,  and  this  time  I 
had  an  uncontrollable  impulse  to  speak.  Upon  describ- 
ing what  I  had  seen  for  the  second  time,  I  was  much 
relieved  to  hear  that  the  matter  was  not  recognized  as 
being  connected  in  any  way  with  the  sitters.     I  may 


22  TELEPATHY 

mention  here  the  child  appeared  to  be  about  three  years 
old,  and  judging  from  the  style  of  dress,  I  described  it 
as  a  girl,  although  the  vision  would  apply  equally  to  a 
boy,  as  at  that  early  age  the  short  clothes  worn  by  both 
sexes  would  be  very  similar. 

"Next  Thursday  morning,  May  9,  1901,  upon  awak- 
ening, I  described  to  my  wife  the  events  of  the  pre- 
vious evening's  seance.  On  the  evening  of  the  same 
day,  namely,  Thursday,  May  9th,  I  was  out  with  a 
friend,  and  upon  my  return  home  at  11.5  p.  m.,  my 
sister,  Mary  Louisa  Policy,  who  resided  with  me  at  the 
time,  made  the  remark,  *I  have  a  piece  of  bad  news  for 
you.*  'Well,'  I  replied,  'what  is  it?  Let  me  know.' 
And  she  answered,  'Brother  George's  little  son,  Jacky, 
has  been  burned  to  death.'  Like  a  flash  I  realized  the 
connection  of  the  sad  event  with  my  vision  of  the  pre- 
vious night.  I  then  asked  my  sister,  'How  did  you 
know  this,  and  when?'  She  replied,  'Mr.  Fred  Sinnett 
told  me  when  he  came  over  to  see  us  this  evening.' 
(Signed)  '■Joh>j  Pollcy" 

I  obtained  from  the  other  sitters  at  the  seance  the 
following  statement : 

"At  the  seance  held  on  the  evening  of  Wednesday, 
May  8,  1901,  at  which  were  present  Mrs.  E.  V.  M.,  Mr. 
Thomas  Atwood,  and  Mr.  John  Policy,  we,  the  under- 
signed, testify  that   Mr.  John   Policy  gave  to  us  a 


TELEPATHY  23 

description  of  a  vision  of  the  burning  of  a  child  which 
he  saw  at  this  seance. 

(Signed  in  full)  "E.  V.  M. 

"Thomas  At  wood" 

I  personally  interviewed  Mr,  John  Policy's  wife  and 
sister  and  received  a  written  statement  from  each  con- 
firming Mr.  Policy's  account. 

A  local  paper  containing  an  account  of  the  inquest 
on  the  child  states  that  the  accident  took  place  on 
Tuesday,  May  7,  and  the  child  was  taken  to  a  hospital 
immediately  and  there  died.  The  father  of  the  child 
wrote  to  me  as  follows : 

"Dear  Sir — In  reply  to  your  inquiry  respecting  my 
late  son,  John  Frederick,  I  beg  to  say  that  on  Tuesday, 
May  7,  my  wife  went  out  to  do  some  shopping,  leaving 
my  son,  aged  two  years  and  two  months,  in  a  bedroom 
with  another  brother  aged  seven.  Whilst  the  elder 
brother  was  getting  some  toys  to  play  with,  the 
deceased  thrust  some  paper  in  the  fire,  pulled  it  out 
again,  and  set  fire  to  his  clothes.  Some  neighbors  took 
him  to  the  Children's  Hospital,  Paddington  Green, 
where  he  passed  away  on  Wednesday,  May  8th,  at 
11.45  a.  m.  No  intimation  of  this  was  given  by  myself 
or  any  member  of  our  family  to  my  brother,  Mr.  John 
Policy,  until  a  friend  of  the  family  called  at  my  address 
on  Thursday,  May  9th,  between  i  and  2  p.  m.,  when  we 
informed  him  of  the  sad  loss  that  we  had  sustained, 


24  TELEPATHY 

and  he  told  us  that  he  intended  calling  on  my  brother 
that  evening,  and  we  asked  him  if  he  would  communi- 
cate the  news  to  my  brother  and  sister  who  reside  at 
Church  Street,  Stoke  Xewington.  Of  course,  Sir,  you 
know  I  am  antagonistic  to  your  views,  but  my  brother 
has  told  me  it  is  for  the  interests  of  science.  If  this 
is  so,  I  take  great  pleasure  in  its  furtherance. — Yours 
sincerely, 

(Signed)  "Frederick  George  Polley" 

In  the  above  case  it  appears  to  me  that  the  vision  of 
the  burning  child  which  Mr.  John  Polley  saw  arose  out 
of  a  spontaneous  telepathic  impression,  either  from 
the  mind  of  the  father  of  the  child  to  his  brother's  ( Mr. 
John  Policy's  mind),  or  from  the  mind  of  one  of  the 
persons  who  was  cognizant  of  the  sad  event. 

In  regard  to  the  second  case  of  spontaneous  telep- 
athy to  which  I  have  referred,  I  cannot  do  better  than 
to  give  the  account  of  same  as  it  appeared  in  the  Jour- 
nal of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research  of  June, 
1912: 

"The  following  case  of  a  reciprocal  telepathic 
impression  occurring  to  two  persons  at  the  same  time 
has  been  communicated  to  us  by  Mr.  W.  \V.  Baggally. 
Both  Miss  Emma  Steele  and  Mr.  Claude  Burgess,  the 
lady  and  gentleman  concerned  in  the  case,  are  known 
personally  to  Mr.  Baggally. 

"Miss  Steele  writes  as  follows: 


TELEPATHY  25 

"  *i6  and  17  Sillwood  Place, 

"  'Brighton,  March  13, 1912 

"  'Mr,  Claude  Burgess,  who  is  an  invalid,  had  been 
staying  at  my  private  hotel,  at  the  above  address,  for 
some  months.  He  left  on  February  15th  to  take  up  his 
residence  at  No.  10  Belgrave  Place,  Kemp  Town, 
Brighton.  In  the  interval  between  the  date  of  his  leav- 
ing and  the  night  of  the  5th  inst.,  when  I  had  the 
remarkable  dream  (if  it  can  be  called  a  dream)  which 
I  am  about  to  relate,  I  had  not  seen  Mr.  Burgess,  and 
nothing  had  occurred  to  cause  me  to  think  particularly 
about  him. 

"  'On  the  above  night  I  retired  to  rest  at  my  usual 
time.  I  awoke  finding  myself  standing  in  the  middle 
of  my  room  and  answering,  "All  right,  I'm  coming," 
to  Mr.  Burgess,  who,  I  thought,  called  three  times: 
''Miss  Steele !    Miss  Steele !    Miss  Steele  I" 

*'  'By  the  time  I  had  put  on  my  dressing-gown  and 
lighted  the  gas  I  was  fully  awake.  I  then  remembered 
Mr.  Burgess  was  no  longer  in  the  house.  I  looked  at 
the  clock  and  noticed  it  was  exactly  3  a.  m.  When  I 
came  downstairs  next  morning  I  told  my  cook  my 
dream,  and  remarked  I  hoped  nothing  had  happened 
to  Mr.  Burgess.  During  the  next  day,  Wednesday, 
March  6,  in  the  afternoon,  a  man  called  while  I  was 
out  and  left  a  note  from  Mr.  Burgess,  which  I  enclose. 
I  was  much  surprised  by  its  contents.    It  struck  me 


26  TELEPATHY 

most  forcibly  getting  it  from  him,  as  he  is  paralyzed 
and  has  to  write  with  great  difficulty  with  his  left  hand. 
He  very  seldom  writes  now,  so  it  must  have  made  a 
great  impression  on  him  seeing  me  as  he  relates  in  his 
letter,  Emma  M.  Steele" 

"The  letter  from  Mr,  Burgess  to  Miss  Steele 
referred  to  above,  which  is  now  in  our  possession,  was 
as  follows: 

"'lo  Belgrave  Place,  Brighton 
"  'My  dear  Emma. — I  had  a  funny  dream  about  you 
last  night,     I  dreamed  that  you  appeared  at  about  3 
a.  m.    Just  a  glimpse  of  you.    It's  funny  isn't  it? — 
Yours,  Claude  Burgess' 

"Miss  Steele's  cook  made  the  following  statement 
to  Mr.  Baggally: 

"'March  n,  jgi2 

"  'On  Wednesday  morning,  March  6th  last.  Miss 
Emma  Steele  came  down  from  her  bedroom  at  8.30. 
I  saw  she  was  looking  pale.  I  asked  her  if  she  were 
not  well.  She  replied  that  she  had  had  a  strange 
dream.  She  heard  Mr.  Burgess  call  her  three  times. 
She  told  me  that  she  suddenly  jumped  up  and  put  her 
dressing-gown  on.  By  the  time  she  had  put  on  her 
dressing-gown  and  lit  the  gas  she  remembered  Mr. 


TELEPATHY  2^ 

Burgess  had  left  the  house.     She  said  it  was  about 
3  o'clock  a.  m.  when  she  heard  Mr.  Burgess  call. 

(Signed)  " 'Sarah  Pollard' 

"The  following  statement  was  written  by  Mr.  Bag- 
gaily  on  March  13,  1912,  from  Mr.  Claude  Burgess's 
dictation : 

"  'On  Tuesday  night,  March  5,  1912,  I  woke  up  at 
about  3  a.  m.  with  a  start.  I  saw  Miss  Emma  Steele 
standing  at  the  door  of  my  bedroom.  I  had  closed  the 
door,  but  she  appeared  to  have  opened  it.  She  was 
attired  in  her  ordinary  dress. 

"  T  was  much  surprised.  It  was  an  absolutely  dis- 
tinct apparition.  I  had  not  been  thinking  of  her  the 
previous  day,  and  I  cannot  tell  why  she  appeared  to 
me. 

"  The  apparition  lasted  about  five  seconds.  I  was 
not  at  all  frightened,  and  went  to  sleep  immediately 
after. 

"  T  was  so  struck  by  what  I  had  seen  that,  next 
morning,  March  6th,  at  about  11  o'clock,  I  wrote  a  let- 
ter to  Miss  Steele  which  I  handed  to  Mr.  William  Wat- 
kins,  the  proprietor  of  the  establishment  where  I  now 
reside,  for  him  to  send  to  Miss  Steele.  In  this  letter  I 
told  Miss  Steele  that  I  had  dreamed  that  she  had 
appeared  to  me  on  the  previous  night. 

(Signed)  "'Claude  Burgess'  " 


28  TELEPATHY 

"In  reply  to  Mr.  Baggally's  personal  inquiries,  Mr. 
Claude  Burgess  stated  that  it  was  the  first  time  that  he 
had  had  a  hallucination  of  this  kind,  and  he  had  not 
had  one  since. 

Statement  by  Mr.  William  IVatkins 

"  'id  Belgrave  Place, 
"  'Brighton,  March  /j,  ipi2 
"  'Mr.  Claude  Burgess  delivered  to  me  a  letter  which 
he  had  written  to  Miss  Steele,  at  about  ii  a.  m.  on 
March  6th,  which  I  handed  to  a  man  of  the  Church 
Army  Labor  Home  to  take  to  Miss  Steele.  The  same 
morning  at  8  a.  m.  Mr.  Burgess  told  me  he  had  dreamt 
of  Miss  Steele.  William  Watkins' 

Statement  by  Mr.  Baggally 

"  'I  called  on  the  afternoon  of  March  13,  1912,  at  the 
offices  of  the  Church  Amiy  Labor  Home,  St.  James 
Street,  Brighton,  and  saw  the  Secretary',  who  showed 
me  an  entry  in  their  books  confirming  the  fact  that,  at 
the  request  of  Mr.  William  Watkins.  a  man  in  their 
employ  had  delivered  a  letter  to  Miss  Emma  Steele  of 
16  Sillwood  Place,  Brighton,  in  the  afternoon  of  March 
6,  1912. 

"  'I  have  interviewed  all  the  persons  connected  with 
this  case,  and  they  confirmed  their  respective  state- 
ments. '  W.  W.  Baggally' 


TELEPATHY  29 

"In  reply  to  our  further  questions  as  to  whether  Mr. 
Burgess's  experience  was  a  dream  or  a  waking  haUu- 
cination,  Mr.  Baggally  wrote  to  us  on  April  i,  1912: 

'*  *I  had  an  interview  with  Mr.  Burgess  to-day,  and 
the  following  is  the  information  I  received  from  him 
respecting  the  points  you  raise.    He  said  to  me : 

"  '  "(i)  I  used  the  word  'dream'  in  my  letter  to  Miss 
Steele  for  want  of  a  better  word.  (2)  I  woke  up  and 
then  had  the  vision  of  Miss  Steele.  (3)  I  did  not 
notice  anything  in  the  room  at  the  time  I  had  the 
vision.  The  room  appeared  dark.  (4)  Miss  Steele 
appeared  to  me  in  a  bright  light,  not  self-luminous  or 
phosphorescent,  but  just  as  she  would  have  appeared 
in  daylight.  She  appeared  to  me  in  the  part  of  the 
room  where  the  door  was." ' 

"Mrs.  Baggally  sends  us  the  following  statement 
enclosed  in  a  letter  dated  April  27,  191 2 : 

"  T  was  in  the  drawing-room  of  Miss  E.  Steele's 
sister  on  the  evening  of  Wednesday,  March  6th,  when 
Miss  Emma  Steele  came  in,  saying  in  an  excited  man- 
ner, ''Where  is  Mr.  Baggally?  He  will  be  so  interested 
in  this." 

"  'She  held  in  her  hand  a  letter  from  Mr.  Burgess, 
and  proceeded  to  tell  me  that  the  previous  night  she 
had  heard,  as  she  thought,  Mr.  Burgess  fall  on  the  floor 


30  TELEPATHY 

of  the  bedroom  over  her  own.    She  sprang  out  of  bed. 

"  'Finding  herself  in  the  middle  of  the  room,  she 
heard  him  call  "Miss  Steele!"  three  times.  She  then 
suddenly  remembered  that  Mr.  Burgess  was  no  longer 
living  in  her  hotel.  She  struck  a  light,  looked  at  the 
clock,  and  found  it  was  3  o'clock.  The  following  morn- 
ing she  felt  so  tired  that  when  giving  orders  to  her 
cook,  the  latter  noticed  her  fatigue  and  commented 
upon  it.  She  told  the  cook  the  reason  was  that  she 
heard  Mr.  Burgess  apparently  calling  her  at  3  o'clock. 

"  'Miss  Steele  proceeded  to  say  that  Mr.  Burgess 
had,  curiously  enough,  sent  her  that  afternoon  the  note 
which  at  that  moment  she  held  in  her  hand,  and  in 
which  he  told  her  that  he  dreamt  she  had  appeared  to 
him  at  3  a.  m.  the  previous  night. 

"  'Miss  Steele  appeared  much  impressed  and  won- 
dered if  anything  had  happened  to  Mr.  Burgess.  I  in- 
formed my  husband  that  same  night,  on  his  return 
home,  of  what  Miss  E.  Steele  had  told  me. 

"  'Laura  E.  Baggally' 

"  'On  my  return  home  on  the  evening  of  March  6th 
my  wife  related  to  me  what  appears  in  her  statement 
above. 

"'W.  \V.  B.\gc.ally"' 

The  above  case  is  evidentially  a  good  one,  inasmuch 
as  both   Miss  Emma   Steele  and   Mr.   Burgess  each 


TELEPATHY  31 

reported  on  the  morning  of  March  6th  (the  one  to  her 
cook  and  the  other  to  his  landlord)  their  experiences 
of  the  previous  night  before  either  of  them  was  aware 
that  a  reciprocal  telepathic  impression  had  occurred 
between  them. 

There  appears  to  be  evidence  that  telepathy  can  also 
occur  between  the  mind  of  a  human  being  and  that  of 
an  animal.  The  reader  will  doubtless  recollect  Mr.  H. 
Rider  Haggard's  case  which  appeared  in  the  public 
press.  This  gentleman,  on  the  night  of  Saturday,  July 
9,  1904,  dreamed  that  a  favorite  dog  of  his  eldest 
daughter  was  lying  on  its  side  among  brushwood  by 
water,  and  that  it  was  trying  to  transmit  in  an  unde- 
fined fashion  the  knowledge  that  it  was  dying.  Next 
day  the  dog  was  missing.  The  body  of  the  dog  was 
subsequently  found  floating  in  the  water  near  a  bridge. 
An  examination  of  the  attendant  circumstances  pointed 
to  the  dog  having  met  its  death  on  the  night  of  Mr. 
Rider  Haggard's  dream.  As  a  result  of  this  gentleman 
having  made  public  this  experience,  he  received  from 
numerous  correspondents  accounts  of  telepathy 
between  the  minds  of  the  writers  of  the  letters  and  the 
minds  of  animals.  These  accounts  were  sent  by  Mr. 
Rider  Haggard  to  the  Secretary  of  the  S.  P.  R.,  who 
handed  them  to  me  for  investigation. 

A  very  good  case  was  that  communicated  by  Lady 
C.    The  following  is  the  account  of  her  experience : 


32  TELEPATHY 

"On  one  hot  Sunday  afternoon  in  the  summer  of 
1900  I  went,  after  hmcheon,  to  pay  my  customary  visit 
to  tne  stables  to  give  sugar  and  carrots  to  the  horses, 
among  the  number  being  a  favorite  mare  named  Kitty. 
She  was  a  shy,  nervous,  well-bred  animal,  and  there 
existed  between  us  a  great  and  unusual  sympathy.  I 
used  to  ride  her  every  morning  before  breakfast 
(whatever  the  weather  might  be) — quiet,  solitary  rides 
on  the  clifYs  which  overhung  the  sea  at  Castle  F.,  and  it 
always  seemed  to  me  that  Kitty  enjoyed  that  hour  in 
the  freshness  of  the  day  as  much  as  I  did.  On  this 
particular  afternoon  I  left  the  stables,  and  walked 
along  to  the  garden,  a  distance  of  a  quarter  of  a  mile, 
and  established  myself  under  a  tree  with  an  interesting 
book,  fully  intending  to  remain  there  for  a  couple  of 
hours.  After  about  twenty  minutes  an  uncomfortable 
sensation  came  between  me  and  my  reading,  and  at 
once  I  felt  sure  that  there  was  something  the  matter 
with  Kitty.  I  tried  to  put  the  feeling  from  me,  and  to 
go  on  with  my  book,  but  the  impression  grew  stronger, 
and  I  felt  compelled  to  hasten  back  to  the  stables.  I 
went  straight  to  Kitty's  box  and  found  her  'cast,'  and 
in  urgent  need  of  help.  The  stablemen  were  in  a  dis- 
tant part  of  the  stables,  whence  I  fetched  them  to  have 
the  mare  up.  Their  surprise  was  great  to  find  me  in 
the  stables  for  the  second  time  that  afternoon." 

I  wrote  to  Lady  C,  and  received  the  following  reply : 


TELEPATHY  33 

''December  -?/,  1^04 
"Lady  C.  would  be  glad  indeed  to  have  the  case 
investigated,  as  it  always  seemed  to  her  to  be  of  the 
greatest  possible  interest.  At  the  same  time,  it  may  be 
difficult  at  this  date  to  get  a  statement  from  the  stable- 
men, one  of  whom  is  somewhere  in  England,  but  Lady 
C.  will  try  to  do  so.  She  is  absolutely  convinced  that 
no  one  entered  the  stable.  Had  the  stablemen  done  so 
they  would  at  once  have  helped  the  mare  to  get  up,  and 
anyone  else  would  have  given  the  alarm.  It  seems  a 
direct  case  of  telepathy  from  animal  mind  to  human." 

Lady  C.  afterwards  sent  me  a  statement  from  a  for- 
mer coachman ;  it  is  this : 

December  31,  IQ04 

'T  was  coachman  at  Castle  F.  at  the  time.  Lady  C. 
came  to  the  stables  after  luncheon  as  usual  on  a  Sun- 
day afternoon  with  carrots  and  sugar  for  the  horses. 
Kitty  was  then  loose  in  her  box  and  quite  well.  I  then 
went  to  my  room  over  the  stables,  the  other  stablemen 
being  also  upstairs,  and  to  my  surprise,  after  half  an 
hour  or  three-quarters  of  an  hour  later,  her  ladyship, 
who  had  been  to  the  garden,  called  me  and  the  other 
stablemen  to  come  and  help  Kitty  up,  as  she  was  lying 
'cast*  ^  in  her  box.  No  one  had  gone  into  the  stable  in 
the  interval. 

(Signed)  "E.  N." 

*This  word  is  used  by  veterinary  surgeons  to  describe  the 
state  of  a  horse  that  has  fallen  down  in  its  box  in  a  stable  and 
cannot  rise. 


34  TELEPATHY 

Telepathy  may  possibly  exist  between  the  mind  of 
an  animal  and  that  of  a  human  being  and  z'ice  versa, 
but  a  sufficient  number  of  cases  have  not  been  collected 
to  establish  this  as  a  fact 


^ 


PART  II 

FRAUDULENT  TELEPATHY 

I  now  come  to  another  class  of  so-called  thought 
transference — that  exhibited  at  public  entertainments 
in  which  genuine  telepathy  plays  no  part. 

On  November  25,  1912,  Miss  Isabel  Newton,  the 
Secretary  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research,  and  I 
attended  the  demonstration  given  by  Yoga  [sic]  Rama 
of  his  alleged  occult  powers  at  the  ''Little  Theater," 
Adelphi. 

Accounts  had  appeared  in  the  public  press  of  a  pre- 
vious private  performance  given  by  this  so-called  Abys- 
sinian Mystic,  at  which  Sir  John  Simon,  the  Solicitor- 
General,  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  and  Mr.  Anthony  Hope 
had  assisted,  and  it  was  stated  that  Yoga  Rama  had 
been  able  to  read  the  thoughts  of  the  Solicitor-General 
by  supernormal  means. 

In  order  to  demonstrate,  in  a  public  manner,  the 
alleged  occult  power  of  this  "psychic,"  a  stage  per- 
formance was  given  at  the  "Little  Theater"  on  the 
afternoon  of  the  above-mentioned  date.  A  large 
audience  was  present,  and  their  expectations  of  wit- 
nessing manifestations  of  an  occult  nature  were  raised 

35 


36  TELEPATHY 

by  the  contents  of  the  program,  wherein  it  appeared 
that  Yoga  Rama  was  to  give  a  demonstration  of  "The 
power  of  mind  over  mind"  by  means  of — 

"i.  Clairaudience. 

"2.  The  possibiHty  of  the  interpretation  of  vibra- 
tions without  the  aid  of  sound. 

"3.  Psychometry  by  sense  of  touch. 

"4.  Telepathy.  The  disclosure  of  names  thought 
of  by  persons  in  the  audience. 

"5.  Disclosure  of  personalities  by  subconscious 
means. 

"6.  Revelations  by  a  circumstantial  chain  of  mind 
pictures. 

"7.  Various  demonstrations  of  ideas  silently  con- 
veyed to  the  spectator  by  suggestion. 

"8.  Descriptions  of  cities  and  places  by  mind  pic- 
tures. 

"9.  Messages." 

Before  Yoga  Rama  made  his  appearance  a  gentle- 
man (a  Mr.  Fletcher)  delivered  a  short  speech  from 
the  stage.  He  stated  that  the  "Yoga"  had  acquired  his 
occult  powers  by  contemplation  after  many  years' 
study.  He  went  on  to  say  that  in  the  Eastern  World 
the  occult  powers  of  the  mind  had  been  more  studied 
than  in -the  Western  World,  but  at  the  present  day  the 
Western  World  looked  upon  these  powers  with  much 
less  prejudice  than  fonnerly. 


TELEPATHY  37 

After  Mr.  Fletcher  had  retired,  Yoga  Rama  made 
his  appearance  from  between  the  center  of  two  cur- 
tains which  hung  at  the  back  of  the  stage.  He  was 
attired  in  a  long  loose  black  gown  and  wore  a  large 
crimson  turban.  He  advanced  to  the  front  of  the 
stage  and  made  a  speech  which  had  a  smattering  of  a 
theosophical  discourse.  He  described  four  kinds  of 
Yogi,  The  first  kind,  he  said,  was  frequently  met  in 
India.  These  Yogi  worked  on  the  physical  plane  and 
produced  effects  resembling  the  feats  of  a  conjurer. 
The  second  kind  worked  in  the  mental  plane  (to  this 
class  he  implied  that  he  belonged).  The  third  dealt 
with  the  spiritual  problems  of  life.  The  fourth  was 
absorbed  in  meditation. 

He  continued  his  speech  by  saying  that  he  required 
the  sympathy  of  the  persons  with  whom  he  would 
experiment.  If  they  mentally  opposed  him  he  could  do 
nothing,  but  if  their  minds  were  sympathetic  and  not 
antagonistic  he  would  succeed. 

The  speeches  of  Mr.  Fletcher  and  of  Yoga  Rama 
still  further  raised  the  expectations  of  the  audience  that 
they  were  about  to  witness  that  afternoon  a  demonstra- 
tion of  the  power  of  mind  over  mind  by  supernormal 
means. 

Yoga  Rama,  after  the  conclusion  of  his  speech, 
called  for  thirty  persons  (ladies  and  gentlemen)  to 
come  upon  the  stage  and  form  a  Committee.  A  gentle- 
man and  I  first  answered  the  call.    We  were  soon  fol- 


38  TELEPATHY 

lowed  by  a  rush  of  ladies  and  gentlemen  who  rather 
inconveniently  filled  the  stage,  but  this  did  not  interfere 
with  the  performance,  as  the  majority  of  the  ladies  and 
gentlemen  kept  at  the  back  of  the  stage  while  Yoga 
Rama  carried  out  his  experiments  with  a  limited 
number  of  the  members  of  the  Committee.  In  order  to 
be  more  at  his  ease,  Yoga  Rama  removed  his  turban. 
I  placed  it  under  a  table  which  stood  on  the  stage.  I 
then  had  a  good  look  at  him.  I  found  he  was  a  black 
man  with  short  crisp  curly  hair.  From  his  appearance 
and  the  fluency  with  which  he  speaks  English,  I  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  he  is  not  an  Abyssinian,  but  an 
American  or  West  Indian  negro. 

Amongst  the  members  of  the  Committee  were  Mr. 
Zancig  and  Mr.  William  Marriott.  Both  of  these  gen- 
tlemen I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  knowing  for  some 
years.  They,  together  with  Mr.  Charles  Guttwoch  (a 
friend  of  Mr.  Marriott),  three  or  four  other  gentle- 
men, and  myself,  were  the  only  members  of  the  Com- 
mittee who  actively  endeavored  to  ascertain  whether 
Yoga  Rama's  exi")eriments  depended  for  their  success 
on  trickery  or  on  other  causes.  The  other  members  of 
the  Committee  remained  passive  spectators.  As 
regards  the  lady  members  with  whom  Yoga  Rama  tried 
a  few  exi>erimcnts,  they  declared  themselves,  at  the 
conclusion  of  the  performance,  to  be  believers  in  his 
alleged  supernormal  claims. 

Before  the  experiments  commenced,  Yoga   Rama 


TELEPATHY  39 

asked  that  some  one  should  blindfold  him  with*  some 
articles  which  lay  on  a  small  table  in  the  center  of  the 
stage.  These  consisted  of  two  pieces  of  folded  paper 
just  large  enough  to  cover  the  eyebrows  and  eyes,  a 
piece  of  porous  plaster  perforated  with  holes,  a  thin 
white  cotton  handkerchief,  two  gloves,  and  a  long  red 
silk  scarf.  Mr.  Marriott  offered  to  blindfold  him.  I 
stood  close  to  him  while  this  was  being  done.  Mr. 
Marriott  placed  the  pieces  of  paper  first  on  Yoga 
Rama's  eyes,  then  the  porous  plaster,  then  the  cotton 
handkerchief,  after  this  the  two  gloves,  and  finally  the 
red  scarf  which  he  wound  several  times  round  his  head. 
The  tip  of  Yoga  Rama's  nose  could  be  seen  under  the 
plaster,  the  white  cotton  handkerchief,  and  the  scarf. 
Yoga  Rama,  who  remained  standing,  then  requested 
some  one  to  sit  on  a  chair  in  front  of  him,  to  think  of 
a  name,  then  to  hold  his  left  hand  (i.  e.  the  sitter's  left 
hand)  in  front  of  the  sitter's  face,  and  to  trace  on  the 
palm  of  the  left  hand  with  the  forefinger  of  the  right 
the  first  letter  of  the  name  thought  of.  The  sitter  was 
then  asked  to  give  taps  on  his  left  hand  or  make  move- 
ments in  the  air  with  his  right  hand  corresponding  to 
the  number  of  letters  of  which  the  name  thought  of 
consisted.  When  Yoga  Rama  suggested  (as  he  subse- 
quently did)  that  the  name  of  the  flower  or  of  a  city 
should  be  thought  of,  he  requested  that  the  same  pro- 
cedure of  tracing  the  first  letter  of  the  name  and  giv- 
ing a  number  of  taps  or  making  movements  with  the 


40  TELEPATHY 

right  hand  corresponding  to  the  number  of  letters 
should  be  followed,  but  when  he  suggested  that  a  play 
of  Shakespeare  should  be  thought  of  he  only  asked 
that  the  first  one  or  two  letters  of  tlie  title  should  be 
traced  on  the  palm  of  the  left  hand  of  the  sitter  with 
the  forefinger  of  the  other  hand.  He  did  not  then  ask 
that  taps  or  movements  of  the  right  hand  should  be 
given  or  made.  About  an  hour  and  a  half  of  the  first 
part  of  the  performance  was  taken  up  by  experiments 
of  the  above  nature.  These  were  varied  only  by  one 
experiment  of  telling  the  title  of  a  hymn  which  a  lady 
thought  of,  one  of  reading  the  thoughts  of  a  young 
lady,  and  one  experiment  with  playing  cards. 

Yoga  Rama  then  made  a  long  speech  about  happi- 
ness depending  on  our  own  selves  and  our  being  what 
we  willed  ourselves  to  be.  He  asserted  that  he  had 
overcome  in  himself  the  passion  of  anger.  He  labored 
these  points  so  much  and  repeated  himself  so  often 
that  it  became  manifest  he  was  making  the  speech 
solely  with  the  object  of  filling  up  the  time. 

The  patience  of  the  Acting  Committee  became  ex- 
hausted, and  one  of  the  members  advanced  to  the 
front  of  the  stage,  inlcrniptcd  Yoga  Rama,  and, 
appealing  to  the  audience,  said  he  had  no  doubt  but 
that  he  had  their  supjwrt  when  he  asserted  that  they 
had  come  to  the  theater  not  to  hear  speeches  but  to 
witness  experiments.  Yoga  Rama  brought  his  speech 
abruptly  to  a  close  after  saying  he  would  now  demon- 


TELEPATHY  41 

strate  the  power  he  had  acquired  of  controlling  the 
functions  of  his  body  and  of  rendering  it  insensible 
to  pain.  To  show  the  control  over  his  body  he  asked 
two  members  of  the  Committee  to  stand  by  his  side 
and  to  look  at  their  watches  and  note  the  length  of 
time  he  was  able  to  cease  from  breathing.  To  show 
his  insensibility  to  pain  he  said  he  would  stand  bare- 
footed on  a  board  studded  with  long  nails,  and  also 
stand  on  broken  glass. 

I  have  given  an  account  of  the  nature  of  the  per- 
formance with  which  Yoga  Rama  favored  us.  I  will 
now  proceed  to  describe  the  experiments  more  in  detail 
and  to  comment  upon  them. 

Mr.  Marriott  was  the  first  person  to  sit  on  the  chair 
in  front  of  Yoga  Rama.  He  was  told  to  hold  his  left 
hand  in  front  of  his  face,  to  trace  the  first  letter  of 
the  name  thought  of  on  the  palm  of  his  left  hand  with 
the  forefinger  of  the  right,  and  give  the  taps  or  make 
the  movements  in  the  air  with  his  right  hand  in  the 
manner  already  described.  Mr.  Marriott,  instead  of 
holding  his  left  hand  up,  held  his  right  hand.  Yoga 
Rama  immediately  said,  "Not  your  right  hand  but 
your  left."  This  was  a  suspicious  circumstance,  as  it 
indicated  that  Yoga  Rama  could  see  notwithstanding 
he  was  blindfolded.  Now  conjurers  know  that  blind- 
folding in  the  manner  above  described  is  not  a  pre- 
caution against  seeing,  as  at  the  time  of  blindfolding 
what  the  conjurer  does  is  to  shut  his  eyes  tightly  and 


42  TELEPATHY 

bring  his  eyebrows  well  down.  When  the  blindfold- 
ing is  finished,  the  conjurer  opens  his  eyes  and  draws 
his  eyebrows  up;  the  bandages  will  then  be  displaced 
and  drawn  up  from  their  original  position  and  he  will 
be  able  to  see  under  the  bandages  through  the  spaces 
between  the  bridge  of  his  nose  and  his  cheeks.  This, 
in  the  joint  opinion  of  Mr.  Zancig,  Mr.  Marriott,  and 
myself,  is  what  Yoga  Rama  did,  and  our  opinion  was 
confirmed  when  we  examined  the  bandages  at  the 
time  they  were  removed  from  the  performer's  eyes,  as 
will  be  described  later. 

Yoga  Rama's  method  of  telling  the  name  thought 
of  is  to  watch  the  movement  of  the  finger  of  the 
sitter's  right  hand  while  he  traces  the  first  letter  of  the 
name  on  the  palm  of  the  left.  This  indicates  to  him 
the  first  letter  of  the  name,  then  he  counts  the  num- 
ber of  taps  or  movements  given  by  the  sitter's  right 
hand.  Thus,  if  the  first  letter  were  W  and  the  num- 
ber of  taps  or  movements  seven,  the  name  in  all  likeli- 
hood would  be  William,  or,  if  the  first  letter  were  W 
and  the  number  of  taps  or  movements  six,  the  name 
would  probably  be  Walter.  Ordinary  Christian  names 
are  limited  in  number,  and  Yoga  Rama  took  care  to 
know  beforehand  whether  the  sitter  were  thinking  of 
a  female  name  or  a  male  name.  It  was  therefore 
not  a  difficult  matter  for  him  to  hit  upon  the  name. 
Moreover,  when  he  was  in  doubt,  as  was  often  the 
case,  he  not  only  asked  that  the  first  letter  should 


TELEPATHY  43 

be  traced,  but  the  second  and  the  third  and  the  fourth, 
etc.  Before  hazarding  a  guess  Yoga  Rama  often 
asked  whether  the  second  or  third  or  fourth,  etc., 
letter  of  the  name  were  a  letter  that  he  mentioned. 
Thus,  if  he  were  not  quite  sure  that  W  had  been 
traced,  but  he  had  noticed  that  seven  taps  or  move- 
ments had  been  given,  he  would  say  is  not  the  fourth 
letter  of  the  name  L.  If  the  sitter  answered  in  the 
affirmative,  he  would  be  pretty  sure  that  William  was 
the  name,  but  if  the  sitter's  answer  were  a  negative 
one,  Yoga  Rama  asked  that  the  letters  should  be 
traced  again  and  the  taps,  etc.,  repeated.  Yoga  Rama 
resorted  to  the  above-described  method  when  he  asked 
the  sitter  to  think  of  the  name  of  a  flower  or  of  a  city, 
but  he  only  tried  one  or  two  experiments  with  the 
names  of  flowers  or  cities,  the  reason  being,  obviously, 
that  the  names  of  flowers  or  cities  are  not  so  limited 
in  number  as  Christian  names,  he  fought  shy  of  them. 
The  reason  he  gave  for  not  being  able  to  guess  readily 
(the  name  of  a  flower  was,  he  said,  that  he  was  not  a 
botanist. 

As  regards  the  titles  of  Shakespeare's  plays  he 
only  asked  that  one  or  two  of  the  first  letters  of  the 
title  should  be  traced  on  the  left  hand,  and  did  not 
require  any  taps  or  movements  of  the  right  hand. 
Any  person  acquainted  with  Shakespeare's  plays  and 
knowing  the  first  one  or  two  letters  of  the  title  could 
have  guessed  with  equal  facility  which  play  was  in 


44  TELEPATHY 

the  mind  of  the  sitter.  After  getting  the  name  of  the 
play,  Yoga  Rama  asked  the  sitter  to  think  of  a  per- 
sonage in  that  play.  He  only  requested  that  this 
should  be  done  once  or  twice,  and  was  not  successful 
in  getting  the  name  of  the  personage  at  the  first  guess, 
but  only  after  making  two  or  three  guesses. 

In  the  experiment  of  telling  the  title  of  a  hymn 
which  a  lady  had  in  her  mind,  Yoga  Rama  resorted 
to  the  same  method  of  asking  her  to  trace  the  first 
letter  of  the  title  of  the  hymn  on  the  palm  of  her  left 
hand.  She  traced  the  letter  L,  and  he  hazarded  the 
guess  that  it  was  "Lead,  kindly  light,"  which  proved 
to  be  correct.  Apparently  the  most  successful  ex- 
periments were  one  carried  out  with  a  young  lady 
and  one  with  myself.  Yoga  Rama  asked  the  young 
lady  to  think  of  something.  He  then,  without  ask- 
ing her  to  trace  any  letter  or  make  movements  with 
her  right  hand,  told  her  that  she  wished  to  get  mar- 
ried. She  acknowledged  that  that  was  the  thought 
in  her  mind.  This  caused  a  good  deal  of  amuse- 
ment amongst  the  audience.  The  young  lady  left  the 
stage  immediately  after  the  experiment.  This  step 
on  her  part  gave  rise  in  the  minds  of  some  of  the 
members  of  the  Committee  that  she  was  an  accomplice, 
and  that,  as  the  experiment  had  been  carried  out  she 
was  no  longer  required  l)y  Yoga  Rama.  These  mem- 
bers of  the  Committee  may  be  doing  an  injustice  to 


TELEPATHY  45 

the  young  lady,  but  it  was  unfortunate  she  should  have 
left  the  stage  at  that  moment. 

As  regards  the  experiment  with  myself.  I  stood 
in  front  of  Yoga  Rama  and  did  not  sit  down,  neither 
did  I  place  my  left  hand  in  front  of  my  face  as  other 
experimenters  had  done,  but  close  against  my  body 
when  tracing  the  letters  of  my  second  name,  which 
was  the  one  I  had  in  my  mind. 

My  object  in  standing  up  was  to  have  my  hands 
out  of  the  line  of  his  vision.  I  took  care  that  the 
movement  of  the  forefinger  of  my  right  hand  when 
tracing  the  letters  should  not  be  seen  by  him. 

Yoga  Rama  repeatedly  asked  me  to  trace  and  re- 
trace all  the  letters  of  the  name.  He  then  gave  the 
name  correctly.  Although  this  experiment  appeared 
to  indicate  that  the  performer  possessed  telepathic 
powers,  it  must  be  born  in  mind  that  he  might  have 
known  who  I  was,  as  he  had  been  practicing  his  so- 
called  occult  powers  for  some  time  in  London  under 
the  name  of  Professor  Pickens  before  he  assumed 
that  of  Yoga  Rama.  It  was  not  necessary  that  he 
should  see  my  face  in  order  to  know  with  whom  he 
was  experimenting.  It  was  observed  that  he  took 
a  very  careful  stock  of  the  dresses  of  the  Acting 
Committee  before  he  was  blindfolded.  It  was  only 
necessary,  therefore,  that  he  should  see  the  lower 
part  of  the  dress  for  him  to  know  which  member  of 
the  Committee  stood  in  front  of  him.    As  one  mem- 


46  TELEPATHY 

ber  after  the  other  experimented  with  him  he  described 
their  dress.  He  asserted  that  he  was  al^le  to  do  this 
by  a  sort  of  telepathic  vision. 

The  experiment  with  the  playing  cards  was  a  simple 
conjuring  trick.  Yoga  Rama  produced  a  pack  of  cards 
and  asked  the  Committee  to  see  that  it  was  unopened. 
1  opened  the  pack,  shuffled  the  cards,  and  handed 
them  to  Mr.  Marriott,  who  had  been  asked  by  the 
Professor  to  retire  to  a  corner  of  the  stage  and  choose 
a  card  which  he  was  to  show  to  two  members  of  the 
Committee.  Mr,  Guttwoch  and  I  accompanied  Mr. 
Marriott  to  the  corner  of  the  stage  and  saw  which 
card  Mr.  Marriott  had  chosen.  Mr.  Marriott  then 
shuffled  the  pack  again  and  handed  it  to  Yoga  Rama, 
who  put  it  in  his  pocket.  Yoga  Rama  then  asked 
Mr.  Marriott  what  card  he  had  chosen.  Mr.  Mar- 
riott informed  him.  He  then  wrote  something  on  a 
piece  of  paper  which  he  folded  and  handed  to  one 
of  the  members  of  the  Committee  to  hold.  He  then 
drew  from  his  pocket  another  pack  of  cards  simi- 
lar in  appearance  to  the  original  pack  (that  it  was 
not  the  original  pack  was  evidenced  by  the  fact  that 
the  bottom  card  of  the  jxick  which  Yoga  Rama  drew 
from  his  pocket  was  not  the  same  as  the  bottom  card 
of  the  original  pack),  but  which  had  the  cards  ar- 
ranged in  an  order  known  to  Yoga  Rama.  He  pro- 
ceeded to  pass  the  cards  one  after  the  other  before 
Mr.  Marriott's  eyes,  asking  him  to  tell  him  when  he 


TELEPATHY  47. 

came  to  the  card  he  had  chosen.  When  Yoga  Rama 
came  to  the  card,  Mr.  Marriott  told  him.  Yoga  Rama 
then  said,  "What  is  the  card  in  front  of  the  one  you 
chose  and  the  one  behind  it?"  He  was  informed 
which  they  were.  He  then  asked  that  the  piece  of 
paper  should  be  opened,  and  it  was  found  that  the 
names  of  the  cards  had  been  written  by  him  on  the 
piece  of  paper.  What  occult  power  Yoga  Rama  in- 
tended to  demonstrate  by  this  simple  conjuring  trick 
I  fail  to  see.  It  could  not  have  been  telepathy,  as 
the  two  cards  (the  names  of  which  Yoga  Rama  had 
written)  had  not  been  chosen  nor  thought  of  by  Mr. 
Marriott. 

A  few  words  will  suffice  to  describe  the  experiments 
which  Yoga  Rama  carried  out  to  show  (i)  the  con- 
trol he  had  acquired  over  the  functions  of  his  body, 
and  (2)  his  insensibility  to  pain.  As  has  already 
been  stated,  he  asked  two  members  of  the  Committee 
to  stand  by  him  and  note  by  their  watches  the  length 
of  time  that  he  was  able  to  cease  breathing.  He  re- 
tained his  breath  for  fifty  seconds.  A  member  of 
the  Committee  at  the  back  of  the  stage  called  out, 
when  the  length  of  time  was  announced,  "That  is 
nothing.  I  can  stop  breathing  for  a  full  minute." 
This  exclamation  appeared  to  disconcert  Yoga  Rama 
a  good  deal.  The  standing  barefooted  on  a  board 
studded  with  nails  and  on  broken  glass  are  common 
tricks  that  can  be  seen  performed  by  negroes  at  coun- 


48  TELEPATHY 

try  fairs.  I  felt  the  points  of  the  nails  and  found 
they  had  been  tiled  down  and  were  blunt.  Mr.  Mar- 
riott sat  o«  the  nails  to  the  amusement  o'f  the  audi- 
ence while  Yoga  Rama  had  gone  off  the  stage  to 
remove  his  boots.  When  Yoga  Rama  returned  he 
stood  barefooted  on  these  nails  only  for  about  half  a 
minute.  He  then  proceeded  to  break  some  bottles  on 
a  piece  of  felt.  He  pounded  away  on  the  glass  with 
a  hammer  till  he  had  reduced  the  greater  part  to 
nearly  powder.  He  carefully  pushed  the  larger  pieces 
of  glass  on  one  side  and  stood  on  the  powdered  por- 
tion. 

I  will  now  proceed  to  state  the  reasons  which  lead 
me  to  the  conclusion  that  Yoga  Rama  was  able  to  see, 
although  apparently  blindfolded. 

I.  The  bandages  were  removed  from  his  eyes  by 
Mr.  Marriott,  who  had  blindfolded  him  at  the  com- 
mencement of  the  performance.  While  this  was  being 
done  I  had  my  face  about  two  feet  away  from  Yoga 
Rama's  face  and  I  carefully  noted  the  position  of 
each  article  as  it  was  being  removed.  The  lower  edge 
of  the  porous  plaster  was  above  the  tip  of  the  per- 
former's nose,  and  the  edge  of  the  white  handker- 
chief above  the  edge  of  the  plaster,  and  above  the 
edge  of  the  handkerchief  was  the  edge  of  the  crimson 
scarf.  The  edges  of  the  handkerchief  and  scarf  were 
sufficiently  high  up,  so  that,  had  the  blindfolding  de- 
pended only  on  these,  he  could  have  seen  under  them. 


TELEPATHY  49 

The  gloves  which  had  been  placed  on  the  handker- 
chief need  not  be  taken  into  account,  as  the  folded 
pieces  of  paper  on  his  eyes  prevented  them  from  press- 
ing into  the  sockets  of  Yoga  Rama's  eyes,  and  he, 
by  merely  closing  the  eyes  and  bringing  the  eyebrows 
well  down  when  he  was  being  blindfolded  and  then 
opening  his  eyes  and  lifting  the  eyebrows  well  up, 
could  displace  the  gloves  from  their  original  position 
and  cause  them  to  rise,  as  a  conjurer  well  knows; 
therefore  the  blindfolding  really  depended  on  the  posi- 
tion of  the  porous  plaster.  Now  when  Mr.  Marriott 
placed  the  plaster  over  the  pieces  of  paper  he  took 
care  that  the  lower  edges  of  both  pieces  should  be  on 
one  of  the  lines  of  holes  which  existed  in  the  plaster 
as  shown  in  the  accompanying  engraving  (which  is 
taken  from  a  photograph). 

He  also  took  care  that  the  lower  edge  of  the  plaster 
should  stick  against  Yoga  Rama's  cheeks.  On  exam- 
ining the  plaster  just  before  it  was  removed  we  found 
that  the  lower  edge  no  longer  stuck  against  the  per- 
former's cheeks.  There  were  hollow  spaces  between 
the  bridge  of  his  nose  and  his  cheeks  through  which 
he  could  have  seen  with  a  downward  glance.  The 
point  now  arises  whether  he  used  both  his  eyes  or 
only  one.  I  noticed  that  Yoga  Rama  always  kept 
the  right  side  of  his  face  towards  the  sitters  when 
trying  the  experiments.  If  the  reader  will  look  at  the 
engraving,  which  shows  the  exact  position   of  the 


50  TELEPATHY 

folded  pieces  of  paper  at  the  time  of  the  removal  of 
the  plaster  from  Yoga  Rama's  face,  he  will  see  that 
the  piece  of  paper  which  covered  his  right  eye  is  no 
longer  on  the  same  line  of  holes  as  the  left  piece,  but 
is  higher  up,  and,  what  is  most  suspicious,  he  will 
note  some  pieces  of  tissue  paper  which  were  stuck 
on  the  plaster  by  Yoga  Rama  and  were  under  the 
pieces  of  folded  paper,  which  prevented  these  from 
adhering  to  the  plaster;  thus  by  an  upper  movement 
of  the  eyebrows  Yoga  Rama  succeeded  in  raising  the 
folded  piece  of  paper  which  covered  his  right  eyes, 
and  with  this  eye  he  glanced  under  the  plaster  and 
watched  the  movements  of  the  sitter's  hands,  etc. 

2.  As  I  have  stated  above,  Yoga  Rama  always  kept 
the  right  side  of  his  head  towards  the  person  with 
whom  he  was  experimenting.  He  tried  one  experi- 
ment with  a  gentleman  who  sat  in  the  second  row  of 
the  stalls.  He  then  turned  his  body  round  so  that 
the  right  side  of  his  face  w\is  in  the  same  position 
relatively  to  this  gentlem.an  as  it  had  been  to  the  sitters 
on  the  stage.  Moreover,  the  lights  in  the  body  of  the 
theater  were  not  alight  when  Yoga  Rama  was  trying 
his  alleged  thought-readings  with  the  members  of  the 
Committee  on  the  stage,  but  when  he  experimented 
with  the  gentleman  in  the  stalls,  one  of  the  electric 
chandeliers  in  the  body  of  the  theater,  not  far  from 
the  gentleman,  was  immediately  lit,  thus  enabling  Yoga 
Rama  to  watch  the  movements  of  the  gentleman's  right 


TELEPATHY  51 

hand  when  tracing  the  letters  of  the  name  he  had 
chosen  on  the  palm  of  his  left  hand,  and  giving  the 
taps  corresponding  to  the  number  of  the  letters. 

3.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  performance,  after  the 
bulk  of  the  audience  had  left,  some  persons  remained 
in  the  foyer  of  the  theater,  and  a  discussion  arose, 
during  which  some  of  the  persons  present  asserted 
that  Yoga  Rama  had  brought  about  his  results  by 
supernormal  means.  Mr.  Marriott,  Mr.  Gutwoch,  and 
I  denied  this.  At  that  moment  Yoga  Rama  came  into 
the  foyer,  and  he  was  accused  by  us  of  having  been 
able  to  see.  He  asserted  that  he  had  not  seen,  and 
to  prove  it  offered  to  try  some  experiments  while  a 
handkerchief  was  held  tightly  against  his  eyes.  Mr. 
Guttwoch  held  a  handkerchief  against  his  eyes.  As 
Yoga  Rama  was  not  now  able  to  see,  he  resorted  to  a 
different  method  from  the  one  he  used  on  the  stage. 
He  held  the  wrist  of  the  left  hand  of  a  lady  with  the 
thumb  and  three  fingers  of  his  right  hand,  while  his 
forefinger  rested  against  the  back  of  the  lady's  hand. 
He  then  asked  her  to  trace  the  letters  of  the  name 
thought  of  with  the  forefinger  of  her  right  hand  on  the 
palm  of  her  left  hand,  which  was  being  held  by  him. 
He  was  able  to  tell  the  name,  but  only  after  repeated 
tracing  of  the  letters  by  the  lady.  Yoga  Rama  not 
being  able  to  be  guided  by  sight  as  in  his  stage  per- 
formances, now  guided  himself  by  the  sense  of  touch. 
Although  I  have  never  before  carried  out  an  experi- 


52  TELEPATHY 

ment  of  this  nature  myself,  when  Miss  Newton  and  I 
returned  to  the  rooms  of  the  Society  for  Psychical 
Research  I  tried  the  experiment  with  her.  I  closed  my 
eyes  and  held  her  wrist,  and  was  able  to  feel  the  letter 
which  she  traced  on  the  palm  of  her  hand.  Manifestly 
this  is  a  difficult  trick  to  perform,  and  requires  great 
practice.  I  noticed  that  Yoga  Rama  chose  the  hand 
of  a  lady  in  preference  to  that  of  a  gentleman,  obvi- 
ously because  a  lady's  hand  is  thinner  than  that  of  a 
man,  and  the  motion  of  her  finger  would  be  more  eas- 
ily felt. 

What  convinced  me  more  than  any  of  the  above  rea- 
sons that  Yoga  Rama  was  able  to  see  during  his  per- 
formance is  the  following  fact.  I  placed  the  sticking 
plaster  over  my  eyes  after  it  had  been  taken  from  Yoga 
Rama's  eyes  and,  to  my  surprise,  I  found  I  could  per- 
fectly well  see  through  it.  The  numerous  small  holes 
with  which  it  was  perforated  allowed  me  to  do  this. 

The  audience  at  the  "Little  Theatre"  had  had  their 
expectations  raised  that  they  were  to  witness  manifes- 
tations of  the  occult  powers  of  the  mind  through  the 
mediumship  of  an  Abyssinian  Yogi,  instead  of  which 
they  witnessed  an  ordinary  conjuring  entertainment  by 
a  man  who  previously  to  assuming  the  name  of  "Yoga 
[sic]  Rama"  was  known  as  Professor  A.  D.  Pickens  of 
Conduit  Street,  London. 

Besides  the  method  used  by  Yoga  Rama  for  produc- 
ing his  so-called  thought  transference,  there  are  others 


TELEPATHY  53 

resorted  to  by  public  entertainers.  The  one  most  in  use 
is  by  means  of  a  verbal  code.  The  letters  of  the  alpha- 
bet are  substituted  and  a  word  can  be  conveyed  by  the 
agent  asking  a  series  of  questions,  each  question  begin- 
ning with  a  substituted  letter.  The  percipient  has  to 
remember  what  letters  the  substituted  ones  represent ; 
he  takes  note  of  the  first  letter  only  of  each  question, 
puts  them  together  in  his  mind,  and  thus  gets  the  word 
that  it  is  the  intention  of  the  agent  to  convey. 

I  have  made  a  table  (shown  opposite)  which  shows 
one  of  these  systems. 

If  the  name  "Alfred"  is  to  be  conveyed,  it  can  be 
done  by  the  following  questions : 

Here  is  a  name .  ==  A 

Can  you  see  it  ? ==  L 

Endeavor  to  do  so ==F 

Mind  what  you  are  doing    .  •.     .  =R 

Go  on =>D 

The  letter  E  is  understood. 

The  transmission  of  the  nature  of  an  article  is  by 
dividing  articles  that  would  be  likely  to  be  brought  to 
a  public  entertainment  into  sets  of  ten,  each  set  being 
indicated  by  a  different  question.  These  sets  have  to 
be  learned  by  heart  by  the  agent  and  the  percipient.  I 
give  in  the  table  four  sets  to  illustrate  my  meaning. 
After  asking  the  question  which  conveys  the  set  to 


54 


TELEPATHY 
TABLE 


SUBSTITUTED  LETTERS 
TABLE 

NUMBERS 
TABLE 

AisH 
B  "T 
C  "S 
D"G 
E  "F 
F  "E 
G  "A 
H"I 
I    "B 

J   isL 
K  "  Pray 
L  "C 
M"0 
N"D 
0  "V 
P  "J 

Q  "  w 

R  "  U 

S  isN 
T  "P 

V  "  Look 
W"R 

X  "  See  this 

Y  "Q 

Z   "Hurry 

1  is  Say 

2  "  Be 

3  "  Can 

4  "  Do 

5  "  Will 

6  "  What 

7  "  Please 

8  "  Are 

9  "  Now 
10  "  Tell 

SETS 

Set  a 

Set  B 

Set  C 

Set  D 

What  is 
this? 

1.  Watch 

2.  Bracelet 

3.  Guard 

4.  Chain 

5.  Breastpin 

6.  Necklace 

7.  Ring 

8.  Rosary 

9.  Cross 

10.  Charm 

What  article 
is  this? 

1.  Handkerchief 

2.  Necktie 
3- Bag 

4.  Glove 

5.  Purse 

6.  Basket 

7.  Book 

8.  Head-dress 

9.  Fan 
10.  Key 

What  is  it 
made  of? 

1.  Gold 

2.  Silver 

3.  Copper 

4.  Lead 

5.  Zinc 

6.  Wood 

7.  Brass 

8.  Paper 

9.  Silk 
10.  Glass 

What 

color? 

I.White 

2.  Black 

3.  Blue 

4.  Brown 

5.  Red 

6.  Green 

7.  Yellow 

8.  Gray 

9.  Purple 
ID.  Violet 

TELEPATHY  55 

which  the  article  belongs,  a  second  question  is  asked, 
beginning  with  the  word  corresponding  to  the  number 
on  the  number  table.  This  will  indicate  what  number 
in  the  set  the  article  corresponds  to.  As  an  example : 
when  the  question  "What  is  this?"  is  asked,  it  means 
that  the  article  corresponds  to  Set  A.  If  the  second 
question  begins  with  "Do,"  such  as  "Do  you  know?," 
this  question  on  referring  to  the  number  table  would 
mean  No,  4;  therefore  the  article  would  be  a  chain. 
Now,  if  the  question  "What  is  it  made  of?"  is  asked, 
it  would  refer  to  Set  C,  and  if  this  question  is  followed 
by  "Can  you  tell  me?,"  on  referring  to  the  number 
table  it  will  be  found  to  correspond  to  No.  3 ;  therefore 
the  article  would  be  a  chain  made  of  copper.  When 
an  article  is  not  in  any  one  of  the  sets  the  substituted 
letter  code  is  used.  Of  course  public  entertainers  learn 
by  heart  a  number  of  sets,  not  only  four. 

For  silent  thought  transference  occasionally  electri- 
cal contrivances  are  resorted  to.  These  are  placed  in 
different  parts  of  the  hall,  and  when  being  pressed  by 
the  foot  or  hand  of  the  agent  will  convey  a  message  to 
a  certain  part  of  the  stage  upon  which  the  percipient 
(who  may  be  blindfolded)  rests  his  foot. 

There  is  another  silent  method  which  can  be  worked 
by  a  confederate  who  is  placed  behind  a  curtain  close 
to  the  chair  on  the  stage  upon  which  the  blindfolded 
percipient  sits.  The  confederate  watches  the  per- 
former who  stands  amongst  the  audience  and  reads 


56  TELEPATHY 

through  a  spyglass  what  he  is  writing  on  his  tablet 
when  putting  down  what  members  of  the  audience 
wish  to  be  done.  The  confederate  then  communicates 
the  contents  of  the  writing  to  the  percipient  on  the 
stage  by  whispering  or  by  an  electrical  apparatus.  The 
position  of  the  performer  or  agent  while  he  is  writing 
in  a  clear  hand  on  his  tablets  with  his  back  to  the  stage 
easily  enables  a  confederate  to  read  the  writing. 

Then  there  is  the  silent  method  of  a  French  con- 
jurer, some  of  whose  performances  I  have  witnessed, 
which  consists  of  suggesting  or  "forcing"  the  specta- 
tors to  do  certain  things,  each  action  having  a  corres- 
ponding number  which  he  conveys  to  his  lady  assistant, 
who  is  blindfolded,  by  touching  her  foot  with  his  after 
she  has  come  down  from  the  stage  and  stands  by  his 
side  amongst  the  audience. 

The  "time-coding"  method  consists  of  silently 
counting  by  the  agent  and  percipient  at  the  same  rate, 
starting  from  a  preconcerted  signal  and  ending  at 
another  preconcerted  signal.  The  performer  amongst 
the  audience  has  in  his  hand  a  piece  of  paper  on  which 
is  written  the  number  that  he  wishes  to  silently  convey 
to  the  other  blindfolded  performer  on  the  stage.  At 
the  moment  that  he  bends  his  head  to  look  at  the  num- 
ber he  begins  silently  counting  at  a  certain  rate ;  a  con- 
federate behind  the  scenes  begins  counting  at  the  same 
rate  from  the  moment  that  the  performer  bends  his 
head.     When  the  performer  lifts  his  head  he  ceases 


TELEPATHY  57 

counting,  so  does  the  confederate.  Each  number  writ- 
ten on  the  paper  is  thus  conveyed,  and  the  confederate 
communicates  the  total  to  the  bHnd folded  performer  by 
means  of  an  electrical  apparatus  or  otherwise. 

I  have  attended  several  performances  in  public  halls 
in  London  at  which  thought  transference — so-called — 
was  carried  out  by  the  above  trick  methods. 

Sir  Oliver  Lodge  was  present  with  me  at  one  of  the 
performances  at  which  the  time-coding  method  was 
used.    He  has  sent  me  the  following  note : 

"I  was  with  Mr.  Baggally  on  one  of  these  occasions, 
and  took  note  of  the  fact  that  he  could  often  guess  what 
was  being  transmitted  by  the  performers  quite  as  well 
as  they  could  themselves.  We  sat  in  a  box  looking  at 
them,  and  he  often  told  me  before  they  had  spoken 
what  they  were  going  to  say  (or  words  to  that  effect). 

"I  perceived  even  without  his  assistance  that  the  per- 
formance, which  was  stimulated  by  the  success  of  the 
Zancigs,  was  an  exceedingly  inferior  imitation  of  what 
they  had  achieved,  and  was  manifestly  done  by  a  code 
of  some  kind.  O.  J.  L." 

Some  of  the  methods  resorted  to  by  public  entertain- 
ers are  so  ingenious  that  the  spectator  is  led  to  believe 
that  genuine  thought  transference  has  taken  place. 
The  following  correspondence,  which  appeared  in  the 
spiritualistic  weekly  paper  called  Light,  illustrates  a 
case  in  point.    In  the  number  of  Light  of  October  25, 


58  TELEPATHY 

1902,   there    appeared    this    letter    headed    "Thought 
Transference" : 

"Sir, — A  few  years  ago  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Baldwin  gave 
the  following  entertainment  in  almost  every  large  town 
in  the  three  kingdoms.  The  public  were  invited  to 
write  any  question  or  questions  they  desired  to  have 
answered  on  a  piece  of  paper,  to  place  it  in  their  pock- 
ets, and  keep  it  there  without  communicating  its  con- 
tents to  anyone,  and  then  when  they  went  to  the  hall 
their  names  were  called  out  and  their  question 
answered  without  the  papers  leaving  their  possession. 
About  fifty  such  inquiries  were  answered  each  evening 
without  a  single  failure  by  Mrs.  Baldwin,  who  sat 
blindfolded  with  her  back  to  the  audience.  From  my 
experience  and  that  of  my  friends,  collusion  was 
impossible,  and  the  only  way  of  accounting  for  the  per- 
formance was  by  thought  transference  or  telepathy 
between  Mrs.  Boldwin  and  those  of  the  audience  with 
whom  she  was  in  mental  sympathy. 

(Signed)  "C.  A.  M." 

Commenting  on  this  letter,  I  wrote  to  Lie/hi,  and  my 
communication  apjx^arcd  the  following  week.  It  was 
to  this  effect : 

"Under  the  heading  of  'Thought  Transference,'  your 
correspondent,  C.  A.  M.,  gives  an  account  of  some 
entertainments  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Baldwin,  at  which  he 


TELEPATHY  59 

says"  (I  here  quoted  from  C.  A,  M.'s  letter,  and  then 
continued  as  follows)  : — "I  never  was  present  at  enter- 
tainments given  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Baldwin,  and  there- 
fore cannot  express  an  opinion  as  to  the  modus 
operandi  in  their  particular  case,  but  I  would  point  out 
that  their  entertainments  bear  a  close  resemblance  to 
those  given  by  conjurers.  The  explanation  of  the 
mystery  in  a  conjurer's  case  is  as  follows: — The  con- 
jurer asks  members  of  the  audience  to  write  their  ques- 
tions secretly,  to  sign  their  names  at  the  bottom  of  the 
question,  and  then  to  fold  the  pieces  of  paper  on  which 
the  questions  are  written  and  place  them  in  their 
pockets.  To  facilitate  the  writing  he  hands  pencils 
round  and  tablets  upon  which  to  rest  the  pieces  of 
paper  during  the  writing  of  the  questions,  or  the  mem- 
bers of  the  audience,  if  they  so  wish,  can  retire  into 
an  adjoining  room  and  write  their  questions  on  a  table. 
The  tablets  and  pencils  are  then  collected  by  an 
assistant  who  is  a  confederate,  who  then  retires  from 
the  hall  to  the  room  where  the  table  is.  The  tablets 
and  table  have  false  surfaces  of  leather  or  other  mate- 
rial, which,  on  being  removed  by  the  confederate,  dis- 
close a  layer  of  carbon  paper  resting  on  another  of 
white  paper  upon  which  the  questions  have  been 
recorded  unknown  to  the  inquiriers.  The  confederate 
then  proceeds  to  read  the  questions  with  their  respect- 
ive attached  signatures,  and  to  communicate  them  to 
the  blindfolded  medium  by  an  electrical  apparatus  upon 


6o  TELEPATHY 

which  the  medium's  foot  rests,  or  by  other  mechanical 
means." 

I  signed  my  letter  W.  W.  B.  A  fortnight  after,  the 
following  letter  appeared  in  Light : 

"Sir, — With  reference  to  the  communication  by  W. 
W.  B.  referring  to  the  supposed  thought  transference, 
and  mentioned  by  another  correspondent,  C.  A.  M.,  in 
connection  with  the  entertainments  of  Professor  Bald- 
win (an  American  conjurer  and  brother  mason), 
whom  I  met  in  Cape  Town  on  two  separate  occasions, 
permit  me  to  state  that  (i)  if  it  is  the  same  Baldwin, 
he  is  one  of  the  cleverest  illusionists  in  his  special  line 
of  trick  thought  transference,  and  W.  W.  B.  is  quite 
right.  (2)  I  know  that  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Baldwin  did 
most  of  their  experiments  by  trick,  because,  being  one 
of  the  chosen  committee  to  test  the  so-called  thought 
reading,  I  fixed  it  absolutely  as  trickery  on  the  lines 
indicated  by  W.  W.  B. 

(Signed)  "Berks  Hutchinson" 

I  was  gratified  to  read  this  letter  and  to  find  that  my 
conjecture  was  correct  that  the  Baldwin  performance 
was  a  mere  exhibition  of  conjuring. 


PART  III 
THE  ZANCIGS 

Some  years  ago  there  appeared  at  the  Alhambra 
Theater,  London,  two  entertainers — Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Zancig — whose  performances  were  of  so  puzzling  a 
nature  that  to  many  who  had  witnessed  them  the  only 
explanation  of  the  results  obtained  appeared  to  be  that 
genuine  telepathy  was  at  play.  The  Daily  Mail  news- 
paper arranged  that  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Zancig  should  be 
subjected  to  a  series  of  severe  tests  at  its  office,  and  on 
November  30,  1906,  these  were  carried  out. 

On  December  ist  the  Daily  Mail  published  a  full 
account  of  these  experiments.  The  publication  of  this 
and  of  other  accounts  by  persons  who  had  witnessed 
the  remarkable  performances  of  the  Zancigs  led  to  a 
heated  controversy  between  the  correspondents  of  the 
Daily  Mail  and  the  Daily  Chronicle.  Those  of  the  first 
paper  mostly  asserted  that  the  performance  was  an 
exhibition  of  true  telepathy,  while  those  of  the  second 
paper  declared  that  codes — visual  and  verbal — would 
account  for  the  phenomena.  Previously  to  the  experi- 
ment carried  out  by  the  Daily  Mail  I  had  obtained  a 
letter  of  introduction  to  the  Zancigs  from  a  friend  of 

61 


6a  TELEPATHY 

mine  who  had  had  private  tests  with  them,  but  as  it 
was  necessary  to  have  the  permission  of  the  manager 
of  the  Alhambra  before  an  interview  with  the  Zancigs 
could  be  arranged,  I  called  at  the  ofhces  of  that  theater, 
and  saw  Air.  Scott,  the  manager.  I  informed  him  that 
I  was  a  member  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research, 
which  body  I  told  him  took  the  deepest  interest  in  tele- 
pathy. I  handed  him  a  letter  that  I  had  written  to  Mr. 
Zancig,  and  on  November  29,  1906,  I  received  the  fol- 
lowing communication  from  the  last-named  gentleman: 

"Dear  Sir, — I  received  a  letter  from  Miss  H.  A. 
Dallas,  telling  me  that  you  would  like  to  meet  us.  Now, 
my  dear  sir,  we  would  be  pleased  to  make  your 
acquaintance,  and  have  you  call  for  a  visit,  but  if  it  is 
for  any  private  show  and  to  be  tried  and  judged  if  our 
work  is,  as  we  represent,  'two  minds  with  but  a  single 
thouglit,'  I  will  have  to  say  No.  We  have  done  nothing 
since  we  arrived  in  London  but  have  callers  to  test  and 
try  us  every  day,  from  three  to  four  ladies  and  gentle- 
men. My  wife  and  I  agreed  to  all  tests  they  put  to  us, 
and  all  was  quite  satisfactory.  Personally  I  do  not 
care,  but  it  has  been  quite  a  strain  on  my  wife.  Should 
you  care  to  witness  our  show,  you  would  be  able  to  see 
us  at  ten  p.  m.  on  the  Alhambra  stage,  but  if  you  care 
to  call  and  see  us,  and  have  a  little  talk,  we  both  would 
be  pleased  to  meet  you.  Trusting  that  I  am  under- 
stood, I  remain,  yours  sincerely, 

(Signed)  "J^''-^'-'S  Z.\ncig" 


TFXEPATHY  63 

Although  the  contents  of  the  above  letter  were  of  a 
discouraging  nature,  I  determined  to  strike  the  iron 
while  it  was  hot ;  therefore,  on  the  evening  of  the  same 
day  I  called,  accompanied  by  my  wife,  at  the  flat  where 
the  Zancigs  resided.  They  were  at  the  time  partaking 
of  their  evening  meal.  We  apologized  for  our  intru- 
sion, but  by  the  kind  way  that  they  received  us  we  were 
soon  put  at  our  ease.  I  informed  Mr.  Zancig  that  I 
was  much  interested  in  telepathy,  and  that  I  had  per- 
sonally carried  out  experiments  in  this  branch  of 
psychical  research,  and  that  I  was  assured  of  the  truth 
of  its  existence  through  the  successes  that  I  had 
obtained. 

Mr.  and  Mrs,  Zancig  impressed  my  wife  and  myself 
most  favorably  by  their  unaffected  and  simple  manner. 
After  a  conversation  which  lasted  about  ten  minutes, 
Mr.  Zancig  very  kindly  spontaneously  offered  to  tiy 
some  experiments.  I  will  now  describe  these.  Madame 
Zancig  went  to  the  other  end  of  the  room  farthest  away 
from  where  Mr.  Zancig,  my  wife,  and  I  sat.  She  faced 
the  wall  with  her  back  to  us ;  Mr.  Zancig  then  wrote 
with  a  chalk  a  line  of  figures  on  a  slate  which  he  held 
in  his  left  hand,  and  called  out  the  word  "Ready." 
Madame  Zancig  immediately  named  the  figures  cor- 
rectly and  in  their  proper  order.  The  same  kind  of 
experiment  was  tried  successfully  three  times.  The 
results  might  have  been  due  to  telepathy,  but  I  was  not 
satisfied,  as  it  could  have  been  possible  that  the  figures 


64  TELEPATHY 

were  prearranged,  or  that  Madame  Zancig  could  tell  by 
the  sound  of  the  chalk  what  figures  were  being  written. 
I  also  had  in  my  mind  the  fact  that  there  is  a  method 
of  communcating  figures  by  time-coding. 

Mr.  Zancig  then  asked  me  to  write  a  double  line  of 
figures.  I  handed  the  slate  to  him,  and  after  he  had 
called  out  "Ready"  Madame  Zancig  proceeded  to  cast 
them  up  correctly. 

As  Madame  Zancig  named  all  my  figures  aloud  as 
she  was  summing  them  up,  this  experiment  was  of  a 
more  complicated  nature  than  the  previous  ones; 
nevertheless,  I  was  not  entirely  satisfied,  as  time-coding 
in  putting  down  the  resultant  figures  by  Mr.  Zancig, 
and  the  hearing  of  the  sound  of  the  chalk  by  Madame 
Zancig  when  I  was  writing  my  own  figures,  might  have 
accounted  for  the  favorable  result. 

To  prevent  the  possibility  of  communicating  by  an 
electrical  or  other  apparatus  concealed  under  the  car- 
pet, I  requested  Mr.  Zancig  to  raise  his  feet  from  the 
floor.  He  immediately  complied  by  sitting  on  the 
table,  where  he  remained  to  the  last  experiment. 

Madame  Zancig  then  retired  into  an  adjoining  bed- 
room with  a  slate  in  her  hand ;  the  door  was  closed,  but 
not  entirely.  My  wife  wrote  down  two  lines  of  figures, 
the  slate  was  handed  by  her  to  Mr.  Zancig,  who  called 
out  "Ready,"  and  he  then  proceeded  without  speaking 
to  add  them  up.  Madame  Zancig  then  came  into  the 
room  with  the  correct  result  written  by  herself  on  her 


TELEPATHY  65 

slate.  This  was  a  more  crucial  test  than  the  last,  but 
still,  although  visual-coding  was  excluded,  sound-cod- 
ing while  Mr.  Zancig  was  writing  the  resultant  sum 
was  not  entirely  so. 

Then  followed  the  experiment  of  transmitting  a 
selected  line  in  a  book.  Mr.  Zancig  handed  me  a  book 
and  asked  me  to  open  it  at  any  page  and  to  point  out  a 
line.  After  I  had  done  so  I  handed  the  book  to  him. 
He  called  out  "Ready."  Then  his  wife  opened  a  dupli- 
cate book  at  the  proper  page,  and  read  the  line  which  I 
had  selected.  Doubtless  the  words  of  the  line  were  not 
communicated  telepathically  or  otherwise  by  Mr. 
Zancig,  but  only  the  number  of  the  page  and  the  num- 
ber of  the  line  counting  from  the  top  of  the  page. 
Nevertheless,  it  was  difficult  to  discover  by  what 
method  this  was  done,  as  Mr.  Zancig  simply  called  out 
"Ready."  There  did  not  appear  to  be  time  for  the 
numbers  of  the  page  and  line  to  be  transmitted  by  time- 
coding.  The  reader  will  observe  that  as  the  experi- 
ments proceeded  they  appeared  to  present  increasing 
evidence  that  true  telepathy  was  at  work. 

The  following  and  last  experiment  that  I  tried  on  this 
occasion  was  the  most  crucial.  I  requested  Mr.  Zancig 
to  go  out  with  me  on  to  the  landing  outside  the  door 
of  the  flat.  I  did  not  previously  inform  Madame 
Zancig  nor  Mr.  Zancig  of  the  nature  of  the  test  that 
I  was  about  to  put.  Madame  Zancig  remained  in  the 
room  with  my  wife.     The  door  was  closed,  but  not 


66  TELEPATHY 

completely.  When  we  were  on  the  landing  I  suddenly 
drew  my  cheque-book  out  of  my  pocket,  tore  out  a 
cheque,  and  handed  it  to  Mr.  Zancig,  requesting  him 
to  transmit  the  number.  Mr,  Zancig  observed  to  me 
in  a  whisper  that  the  noise  of  the  traffic  in  the  street 
was  very  disturbing.  This  was  true,  as  the  hall  door 
to  the  street  was  oi)en.  He  then  remained  silent  while 
he  looked  at  the  cheque.  My  wife  then  came  out  on  to 
the  landing,  and  handed  me  a  slate  upon  which 
Madame  Zancig  had  during  the  experiment  written  the 
words,  "In  the  year  1875."  ^Ir.  Zancig  then  said 
aloud,  "This  is  not  what  we  want;  it  is  the  number." 
My  wife  returned  into  the  room  with  the  slate,  and  the 
door  was  closed,  but  not  completely.  It  was  impos- 
sible, however,  for  Madame  Zencig  to  see  her  husband. 
The  suspicion  arose  in  my  mind  that  the  number  on 
the  cheque  might  have  been  communicated  to  Madame 
Zancig  by  the  words  that  Mr.  Zancig  had  spoken  aloud. 
I  therefore  took  the  cheque  that  he  had  in  his  hand 
and  substituted  another  one  with  a  different  number 
that  I  tore  from  the  bottom  of  my  cheque-book.  Mr. 
Zancig  remained  absolutely  silent  during  the  whole 
time  that  this  second  experiment  lasted.  My  wife 
again  came  out  of  the  room  with  the  slate,  upon  which 
Madame  Zancig  had  written  quite  correctly,  in  their 
proper  order,  four  of  the  five  numbers  of  the  second 
cheque,  with  the  exception  of  the  last  figure,  which  was 
wanting,  but  just  as  we  were  returning  to  the  room 


JELEPATHY  67 

Madame  Zancig  said,  'There  was  another  figure;  it 
was  four" — which  was  correct.  This  impressed  me  as 
a  good  test,  with  regard  to  the  three  last  numbers  of 
this  cheque,  which  were  different  from  the  correspond- 
ing ones  of  the  first  cheque.  Madame  Zancig  could  not 
see  her  husband,  and  he  remained  absolutely  silent 
while  the  experiment  was  being  carried  out. 

I  insert  here  a  note  by  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  in  which  he 
gives  an  account  of  an  experiment  of  a  similar  nature, 
and  also  of  other  experiments  which  he  tried  with  the 
Zancigs. 

** Independently  of  the  more  thorough  investigations 
of  Mr.  Baggally,  I  myself  was  favored  with  a  private 
interview  with  the  Zancigs,  who  were  friendly  and  con- 
siderate and  helpful;  and  I  tried  the  experiment  of 
having  Mrs.  Zancig  outside  the  room,  though  with 
door  open,  and  Mr.  Zancig  with  me  and  quite  silent. 
I  wrote  five  or  six  figures  on  a  slate,  taking  care  to 
make  no  noise,  and  Mrs.  Zancig  failed  to  get  them 
correctly.  Zancig  seemed  distressed  at  that,  and  after 
a  little  time  groaned  out,  *Oh,  surely  you  can  do  this' ; 
almost  immediately  after  which  Mrs.  Zancig  came  into 
the  room  with  the  correct  figures  written  on  her  slate. 
It  was  difficult  to  see  how  the  sentence  had  conveyed 
the  figures,  but  it  was  instructive  to  find  that  utterance 
of  some  kind  seemed  necessary.  It  was  partly  this,  and 
partly  the  manifest  difficulty  of  eliminating  all  possi- 
bilities of  code  between  a  pair  of  performers  accus- 


68  TELEPATHY 

tomed  to  go  about  together,  with  years  of  experience 
behind  them,  that  prevented  me  from  doing  what  I 
j)robably  ought  to  have  done,  though  circumstances  did 
not  render  it  very  easy,  namely,  to  make  a  serious  study 
of  the  Zancig  phenomena, 

"Moreover,  I  questioned  Mr.  Zancig  about  codes, 
and  found  that  he  was  famihar  with  a  great  many. 
He  was  quite  fratik  about  it,  and  rather  imphed,  as  I 
thought,  that  at  times  he  was  ready  to  use  any  code 
or  other  normal  kind  of  assistance  that  might  be 
helpful,  though  he  assured  me  that  he  found  that  he 
and  his  wife  did  possess  a  faculty  which  they  did  not 
in  the  least  understand,  but  which  was  more  efficient 
and  quicker  than  anything  they  could  bet  by  codes. 
On  the  whole,  I  think  this  extremely  likely,  but  the  rapy- 
idity  and  the  certainty  and  dependableness  of  the  power 
went  far  beyond  anything  that  I  could  imagine  as  pos- 
sible between  people  who  depended  on  supernormal 
faculty  alone.  But  if  there  was  a  mixture  of  devices 
between  people  so  skilled,  I  despaired  of  bringing  the 
genuine  part  of  the  phenomenon  to  a  definite  issue. 

"I  do  not  think  that  either  this  or  the  weight  of  my 
other  avocations  are  a  sufficient  excuse  for  this  neglect, 
but  it  certainly  was  not  easy  to  get  opportunities  for 
careful  investigation.  One  of  the  main  difficulties  was 
that  they  were  not  free  agents,  having  entered  into  con- 
tracts with  managers  whose  financial  interests  partly 
depended  upon  the  continued  uncertainty  of  the  pmblic 


TELEPATHY  69 

as  to  the  causes  underlying  their  very  remarkable  per- 
formance. Moreover,  I  knew  that  so  skilled  an  inves- 
tigator as  Mrs.  Baggally  was  more  favorably  impressed 
with  them  than  I  was  myself,  and  was  able  to  give  to 
them  some  considerable  time  and  attention. 

"The  extraordinary  and  rapid  success  with  which 
Mrs.  Zancig  named  one  thing  after  another,  handled  or 
seen  by  her  husband  as  he  went  through  the  hall  in 
their  public  performances,  is  familiar  to  everybody 
who  attended  those  exhibitions ;  but  one  episode  which 
I  have  not  put  on  record  did  impress  me  as  rather 
exceptionally  good,  though  entirely  unsensational  and 
unnoticeable  at  the  time.    I  relate  it  here : 

"The  Zancigs  happened  to  come  to  Birmingham  for 
a  week  during  the  University  Vacation  when  I  was 
away.  On  the  last  day  of  their  performance  I  hap- 
pened unexpectedly  to  return  to  Birmingham,  and  was 
dining  at  the  club  with  some  other  men.  Some  one 
remarked  that  the  Zancigs  were  performing,  and  sug- 
gested that  we  should  cut  dessert  and  go  and  see  them ; 
so  we  went  in  the  middle  of  the  performance  and  sat 
at  the  back  of  the  gallery.  Everything  went  on  as 
usual.  Mrs.  Zancig  was  on  the  stage,  blindfolded,  I 
think,  though  I  attach  no  importance  to  that.  Mr. 
Zancig  had  been  through  the  body  of  the  hall,  and  was 
coming  along  the  side  gallery,  taking  objects  from 
members  of  the  audience  as  he  went,  and  having  them 
described  quickly  one  after  the  other  as  usual,  when  he 


70  TELEPATHY 

caught  sight  of  me  at  the  back  of  the  gallery,  and  indi- 
cated recognition  by  a  little  start.  The  next  object  that 
he  took  in  hand  (a  purse  or  what  not)  he  said,  'What 
is  this?'  and  Madame  Zancig  on  the  stage  said  'Oliver.' 
Zancig  shook  his  head  and  muttered,  *Xo,  that's  what 
I  was  thinking  of,  but  what's  this?'  On  which  she 
said  whatever  it  was  correctly,  and  the  performance 
went  on  as  usual ;  my  friends  in  due  time  getting  their 
tests  efficiently  done.  Nobody  noticed  the  incident  in 
particular;  it  was  over  in  a  second.  It  conveyed  no 
impression  of  anything  except  of  a  slight  confusion, — 
an  error,  in  fact,  immediately  corrected, — but  I  could 
not  fail  to  notice  that  the  very  unimportant  incident 
tended  in  favor  of  the  view  that  a  power  of  sympathy 
or  communication  between  them  was  genuine,  since  she 
got  an  undesired  and  uninteded  impression  which  cer- 
tainly was  at  the  moment  in  Mr.  Zancig's  mind. 

O.  J.  L." 

Later,  on  the  same  evening  of  the  experiment  with 
the  numbers  on  my  cheque-book  which  I  have 
described  above,  my  wife  and  I  attended  the  public  per- 
formance at  the  Alhambra.  We  were  seated  at  a  dis- 
tance from  the  stage.  When  Mr.  Zancig  came  amongst 
the  audience  my  wife  handed  him  a  piece  of  something 
black,  the  nature  of  which  it  was  difficult  to  tell  at  first 
sight.  He  stooi^cd  down  and  asked  in  a  whisper. 
"Wliat  is  that  ?"  My  wife  answered,  also  in  a  whisper, 
"Liquorice."    Madame  Zancig  immediately  called  out 


TELEPATHY  71 

from  the  stage,  "Liquorice."  No  word  had  been 
spoken  by  Mr.  Zancig  after  my  wife  had  whispered  the 
word  "Liquorice."  I  then  handed  a  visiting-card  with 
a  double  name.  Zancig  read  to  himself  in  a  low  voice 
the  last  name,  which  was  Hutchinson,  and  said,  "What 
is  the  first  name?"  Madame  Zancig  called  out  "Berks;" 
this  was  correct.  It  appeared  to  me  suspicious,  how- 
ever, that  the  question,  "What  is  the  first  name?" 
although  appropriate  and  natural,  should  contain  the 
same  number  of  words  as  there  are  letters  in  the  name 
Berks — namely,  five.  Therefore  some  months  after,  at 
another  performance,  I  wrote  the  same  name,  Berks 
Hutchinson,  on  a  piece  of  paper  and  handed  it  to  Mr. 
Zancig.  This  time  he  asked,  "What  is  this  ?"  Madame 
Zancig  replied,  "A  piece  of  paper  with  a  name."  Mr. 
Zancig  said,  "Give  the  name'.'  She  replied,  "Berks 
Hutchinson." 

I  attended  a  series  of  performances  at  the  Alhambra, 
and  took  down  the  questions  and  answers  in  order,  if 
possible,  to  discover  the  code.  On  witnessing  a  first 
performance  the  spectator  might  be  led  to  believe  that 
w^ord-coding  alone  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  mystery,  but 
if  notes  are  taken  at  a  number  of  performances  he  will 
find  that  the  same  question  is  answered  differently  time 
after  time. 

From  my  experiments  with  the  Zancigs  I  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  although  the  alleged  transmission  of 
thought  might  possibly  depend  on  a  code  or  codes 


72 


TELEPATHY 


which  I  \vas  unable  to  unravel,  yet  their  performance 
was  of  such  a  nature  that  it  was  worthy  of  serious 
scientific  examination.  On  the  assumption  that  they 
possessed  genuine  telepathic  powers  it  would  be  a  pity 
that  the  opportunity  of  investigating  their  claim  should 
be  missed.  I  therefore  set  myself  to  work  to  arrange 
with  Mr,  Alfred  Moul,  managing  director  of  the 
Alhambra,  and  Mr.  Zancig  for  some  experiments  to 
be  tried  before  a  Committee  of  the  members  of  the 
Society  for  Psychical  Research. 

An  article  appeared  in  the  Daily  Mail,  inspired  evi- 
dently by  Mr.  Moul,  from  which  I  now  quote : 

"We  have  suggested  to  Mr.  Zancig  that  in  preference 
to  inquiries  into  telepathy  by  unskilled  persons  he 
should  place  himself  in  the  hands  of  the  Society  for 
Psychical  Research,  of  which  Mr.  Gerald  Balfour  is 
the  President,  and  of  which  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  Sir  Wil- 
liam Crookes,  and  other  distinguished  scientists  are 
leading  members.  Mr.  Zancig  has  informed  us  that  he 
has  already  received  a  communication  from  that 
Society,  and  that  he  was  entirely  willing  to  place  him- 
self and  Madame  Zancig  at  the  disposal  of  the  Society 
for  a  thoroughly  scientific  series  of  tests." 

The  investigation  by  the  Society  for  Psychical 
Research,  at  which  I  was  present,  took  place  on  Jan- 
uary 1 8,  1907.  I  regret  that  I  cannot  give  an  account 
of  what  took  place  at  this  meeting,  as  it  was  mutually 
arranged  between  Mr.  Moul  and  the  S.  P.  R.  that  the 


TELEPATHY  73 

results  should  not  be  divulged.  They  appeared,  how- 
ever, sufficiently  favorable  to  some  of  the  members 
present  (though  not  to  all)  to  induce  them  to  subse- 
quently form  an  unofficial  Committee  to  carry  out 
further  tests.  These  unofficial  experiments  did  not 
take  place  until  July  26,  1907. 

In  the  meantime  I  continued  my  own  private  experi- 
ments. A  striking  one  Is  the  following.  I  was  in  the 
balcony  of  the  Alhambra  on  January  19,  1907,  and 
when  Mr.  Zancig  came  to  that  part  of  the  house  I 
handed  him  a  piece  of  paper  on  which  I  had  written 
the  word  "Istapalapan."  I  took  care  that  he  should 
not  see  the  word  previously  to  my  giving  him  the  paper. 
Zancig  remarked  to  me  in  a  whisper,  "This  is  a  long 
word."  Owing  to  the  distance  from  his  wife  it  could 
not  have  been  possible  for  her  to  overhear  these  words. 
Then  Mr.  Zancig  called  out,  "Spell  this."  Madame 
Zancig  immediately  wrote  on  the  blackboard  which  was 
on  the  stage  "Istapala,"  and  when  she  came  to  the  sec- 
ond "p"  she  wrote  "f"  and  then  "san."  I  have  often 
noticed  that  when  Madame  Zancig  makes  a  mistake  in 
a  letter  or  number  there  is  a  similarity  in  the  form  of 
the  letter  or  number  to  that  which  was  to  be  trans- 
mitted ;  thus,  she  would  put  down  "f "  for  "p,"  "7"  for 
"9."  "fsan"  in  this  case  is  very  like  "pan,'  and  Mr. 
Zancig  may  have  mistaken  the  letters.  I  fail  to  under- 
stand how  in  this  experiment  he  was  able  to  code  such 
a  long  word  as  "Istapalafsan"  by  the  simple  words 


74  TELEPATHY 

"Spell  this."  It  would  appear  as  if  Madame  Zancig 
really  saw  what  Mr.  Zancig  was  looking  at.  The 
reader  w-ill  recollect  that  in  his  preliminary  remarks  at 
each  of  his  performances  Zancig  says,  "What  I  see, 
Madame  Zancig  sees." 

I  have  several  times  observed  this  alleged  peculiarity, 
notably  so  on  the  occasion  of  the  tests  at  the  Gramo- 
phone offices,  which  took  place  on  February  22,  1907, 
and  at  which  I  was  one  of  the  members  of  the  Commit- 
tee. Mr.  and  Mrs.  Zancig  were  divided  by  a  large 
screen.  They  could  not  see  each  other.  A  recording 
trumpet  was  placed  near  each,  into  which  they  spoke. 
A  table  was  placed  by  the  side  of  Mr.  Zancig  on  which 
a  great  number  of  articles  had  been  placed  by  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Committee.  Madame  Zancig  with  great 
rapidity  named  the  articles  as  Mr.  Zancig  took  them  up 
in  answer  to  his  "What  is  this?  and  this?"  etc.  An 
incident  which  struck  me  as  remarkable  was  the  fol- 
lowing. Mr.  Zancig  raised  a  pencil,  saying,  "What  is 
thus?"  and  after  Madame  Zancig  had  correctly  stated 
what  it  was,  he  took  up  immediately  (not  in  the  vicin- 
ity of  the  pencil,  but  some  distance  from  it)  a  case, 
and  said,  "And  this?"  Instead  of  naming  the  article 
Madame  Zancig  proceeded  to  enumerate  in  their 
pro{x:r  order  the  articles  that  lay  between  the  two 
articles  which  Mr.  Zancig  had  taken  up.  Thus,  a 
pencil,  a  seal,  a  penknife,  a  case.     It  apix^arcd  as  if 


TELEPATHY  75 

Madame  Zancig  had  actually  seen  the  articles  over 
which  her  husband  had  passed  his  hand. 

An  excellent  test  was  the  following.  Dr.  W.  M'Dou- 
gall,  a  member  of  the  Council  of  the  S.  P.  R.,  who  was 
present  at  these  tests,  borrowed  a  book  from  one  of  the 
members  of  the  Committee.  He  came  to  the  side  of  the 
screen  where  Mr.  Zancig  stood,  opened  the  book  at  a 
certain  page,  then  pointed  to  the  middle  of  a  line  in  the 
center  of  the  page.  Mr.  Zancig,  without  taking  the 
book  in  his  hand,  glanced  at  the  line,  then  Dr. 
M'Dougall  shut  the  book,  took  it  to  the  other  side  of 
the  screen,  and  handed  it  closed  to  Madame  Zancig. 
Mr,  Zancig  remained  absolutely  silent,  placed  his  hand 
against  his  forehead,  and  appeared  to  make  a  strong 
mental  effort.  Madame  Zancig,  after  a  lapse  of  a 
minute,  opened  the  book  at  the  proper  page  and  began 
reading  at  the  word  in  the  middle  of  the  line  that  had 
been  chosen  by  Dr.  M'Dougall.  Some  members  of  the 
Committee  and  I  stood  quite  close  to  Mr.  Zancig.  We 
did  not  hear  him  utter  a  sound.  He  could  not  be  seen 
by  Madame  Zancig  owing  to  the  screen. 

I  was  present  at  the  matinee  performance  given 
under  the  auspices  of  the  Daily  Mirror  newspaper  at 
the  Alhambra.  Dr.  H.,  principal  surgeon  of  a  well- 
known  hospital,  handed  to  Mr.  Zancig  a  set  of  skeins 
of  silk  of  different  colors.  These  were  then  passed  on 
to  Madame  Zancig,  who  was  on  the  stage.  Dr.  H. 
pointed  silently  to  a  skein  of  silk  of  a  corresponding 


76  TELEPATHY 

set  which  he  had  retained,  and  which  he  took  care 
Madame  Zancig  could  not  see.  Mr.  Zancig,  who  pre- 
served absolute  silence,  and  remained  motionless, 
looked  at  the  color  of  the  skein,  and  in  the  space  of  half 
a  minute  his  wife  picked  out  a  skein  of  the  correspond- 
ing color  from  the  set  that  she  had  in  her  possession. 
This  test  was  tried  successfully  three  times.  I  particu- 
larly took  note  that  Mr.  Zancig  remained  silent  and 
motionless,  retaining  the  same  position  of  his  body 
during  the  course  of  the  three  experiments. 

I  have  tried  tests  with  Mr.  and  Madame  Zancig  in 
the  transmission  of  diagrams.  I  took  with  me  to  a 
private  house  to  which  I  was  invited  an  envelope  con- 
taining cards  with  diagrams  on  them.  Madame  Zancig 
sat  behind  a  large  screen  at  the  end  of  the  room.  By 
her  side  sat  a  lady,  a  friend  of  mine,  who  watched 
Madame  Zancig  and  saw  that  she  did  not  move  from 
her  chair.  Mr.  Zancig  stood  close  to  me  near  the  other 
end  of  the  room.  I  presented  the  envelope  to  him, 
retaining  it  in  my  hand.  He  drew  out  one  of  the  cards 
on  which  was  a  diagram  not  known  either  to  him  or  to 
me  till  he  looked  at  it.  He  fixed  his  gaze  intently  on 
it,  remained  motionless,  and  in  a  whisper  said  to  me, 
"Please  say  ready."  I  called  out,  "Ready,"  and  his 
wife  then  drew  a  diagram  on  a  piece  of  paper,  at  the 
same  time  saying,  "Something  like  half  a  moon." 

Mr.  Zancig  then  drew  another  card  from  the  enve- 
lope.   This  time  he  did  not  speak,  but  nodded  his  head 


TELEPATHY 


^ 


Mx.  Zancig's  Diagram 


17 


D 


Madamb  2ancio's  Drawino 

once,  and  I  called  out,  "Ready."  Madame  Zancig 
thereupon  observed,  "It  is  a  square  within  a  square." 
The  diagram  that  Mr.  Zancig  was  looking  at  was  this : 


[a] 


his  wife  drew  this : 


n 


Two  more  cards  were  then  drawn,  but  Madame  Zancig 
did  not  succeed ;  she  got  absolutely  wrong  drawings. 

At  a  public  performance  at  Eastbourne  I  handed 
Mr.  Zancig  this  diagram  : 


V 


a  +  jf 


78  TELEPATHY 

He  called  out,  "Draw  this."  Madame  Zancig,  who  was 
on  the  platform,  said,  "It  is  something  like  this."  She 
made  a  motion  with  her  right  arm  like  drawing  a  capi- 
tal V ;  she  then  drew  it  on  the  blackboard.  After  this 
she  slowly  drew  a  horizontal  line  through  the  \^  thus : 


V 


Mr.  Zancig  said,  "Give  the  number."  She  then  placed 
a  2  in  the  proper  position.  He  then  called  out,  "Give 
the  rest."  She  thereupon  placed  the  a  under  the  line, 
thus: 


¥ 


Mr.  Zancig  said,  "What  more?"  His  wife  placed  the 
sign  of  -f-  correctly,  but  she  rubbed  it  out  several  times 
as  if  in  doubt.  Finally  she  put  down  the  sign  of  -}- 
and  a  capital  X,  so  that  her  drawing  appeared  like 
this: 

2 


¥ 


a  ^  X 


I  have  had  many  other  experiments  with  this  gifted 
couple,  but  have  not  yet  obtained  the  crucial  test  of 
getting  Mr.  Zancig  to  be  in  a  distant  room  with  closed 
doors,  while  his  wife  was  in  another  room.  The  pos- 
sibility of  their  using  a  sound  code  at  one  time  and  a 


TELEPATHY  79 

visual  code  at  another  is  therefore  not  entirely 
precluded. 

Although  I  have  been  quite  unable  to  discover  the 
methods  by  which  they  can  possibly  communicate  when 
a  visual  and  a  sound  code  are  not  detected,  yet  I  will 
reserve  my  ultimate  opinion  until  I  obtain  tests  under 
the  crucial  conditions  that  I  have  named. 

Not  only  did  I  personally  meet  with  difficulties  in 
endeavoring  to  explain  the  performances  of  Mr.  and 
Madame  Zencig,  but  also  the  members  of  the  unofficial 
Committee  that  I  have  referred  to.  I  now  give  an 
extract  from  our  unofficial  report. 

"...  It  must  be  remembered  that  the  antece- 
dent probabilities  in  favor  of  a  code  to  explain  all  per- 
formances of  this  kind  are  enormous. 

"While  we  are  of  opinion  that  the  records  of  experi- 
ments in  telepathy  made  by  the  Society  for  Psychical 
Research  and  others  raise  a  presumption  for  the  exist- 
ence of  such  a  faculty  at  least  strong  enough  to  entitle 
it  to  serious  scientific  attention,  the  most  hopeful 
results  hitherto  obtained  have  not  been  in  any  way 
comparable  as  regards  accuracy  and  precision  with 
those  produced  by  Mr.  and  Madame  Zancig.  Further, 
there  is,  so  far  as  we  are  aware,  no  case  of  any  public 
performers  (including  certain  recent  examples)  where 
the  use  of  a  code  or  apparatus  has  not  been  more  or 
less  readily  discoverable  or  clearly  to  be  inferred.  In 
considering,  therefore,  the  claim  of  Mr.  and  Madame 


8o  TELEPATHY 

Zancig  to  the  possession  of  a  genuine  telepathic  faculty, 
one  is  faced  by  the  initial  difficulty  that  such  a  faculty 
must  be  regarded  as  unique  in  quality,  and  Mr.  and 
Madame  Zancig  themselves  as  unique  in  kind,  a  diffi- 
culty on  the  force  of  which  it  is  not  necessary  to  insist. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  difficulty  of  suggesting  by  what 
method,  if  not  by  telepathy,  they  communicate  is  con- 
siderable. Those  who  have  only  witnessed  the  public 
theater  performances,  clever  and  perplexing  as  these 
are,  will  not  appreciate  how  hard  it  is  to  offer  any 
plausible  explanation  of  their  modus  operandi." 

In  conclusion,  I  would  wish  to  point  out  that  the 
establishment  of  the  fact  that  telepathy  is  a  scientific 
truth  would  have  bearings  of  the  greatest  importance. 

It  would  show  that  the  transmission  of  thought  could 
occasionally  be  effected  otherwise  than  by  the  ordinary 
sense  channels. 

It  would  change  the  materialistic  conception  that 
thought  only  acts  within  the  limits  of  the  brain. 

It  would  modify  the  materialistic  scientific  view  of 
the  relation  of  mind  to  matter. 

I  trust  that  what  I  have  written  will  act  as  an  incen- 
tive to  some  of  my  readers  to  try  experiments  in  this 
branch  of  psychical  research. ^    It  is  not  enough  that  a 

^  Information  relating  to  cases  of  genuine  telepathy  may 
be  sent  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research, 
20  Hanover  Square,  London,  who  will  be  pleased  to  investigate 
them. 


TELEPATHY  8i 

few  individuals  by  patient  inquiry  and  experiment 
should  have  been  convinced  of  the  reality  of  telepathy. 
What  is  wanted  is  that  scientific  men  generally,  by  the 
record  of  an  overwhelming  number  of  experiments 
under  the  strictest  test  conditions,  should  be  convinced 
of  its  truth.  Once  let  them  be  so,  then  public  convic- 
tion will  in  due  time  follow. 

Meanwhile  I  feel  bound  to  state  that,  in  spite  of 
initial  improbability,  the  experiences  which  I  myself 
have  had,  as  partly  narrated  in  this  book,  especially 
those  briefly  summ.arized  in  Part  I,  have  convinced  me 
that  the  telepathic  faculty  does  exist,  and  that  its  detec- 
tion is  a  genuine  extension  of  scientific  knowledge ; 
though  much  more  will  have  to  be  done  before  the  bare 
fact  receives  its  explanation  and  is  permanently  incor- 
porated in  a  coherent  system  of  Science. 


Vot.  4  (Comiriste). 

CLAIRVOYAXCE  AND  CRYSTAL  GAZING. 

As  St.  Paul  points  out  man  has  a  natunil  (or  material)  body  and  a  srrfrltual 
body.  Tlicre  are  also  a  matt-rial  wurld  and  a  Bpirltual  worliC  At  death  (ao-caJed) 
tho  s:>lrltual  body  leaves  the  material  bod>'  and  goes  to  tho  spiritual  «-orl.l. 

With  tho  eye.  we  can  only  s«j  materiel  tlrn^s.  T.>  sw.  U\o  siwritual  world  we 
must  cultivate  the  spiritual  sight.  Scdrig  spiritual  things  with  the  spiritual  sliht  is 
calli^  ClairBoyance    (or  ■•Second  Sight"). 

You  can.  if  you  choose.  oulUvata  your  Clairvoyant  faculty.  If  you  do.  you  wi'l 
be  aWe  to  s-e  iila/ns  and  persons  In  tho  spiritual  «x>rid.  Tou  will  be  able  t> 
deerrlbo  to  your  fneiuls  pcnplo  in  spirit  life  that  they  have  kik«vQ  ht-ra 

Further,  yiu  will  be  able  to  see  what  is  going  dr  at  a  dlftanoe  In  this  world. 
You  will  also  bo  able  to  see  Into  the  past  and  tho  future.  Yf>u  will  be  abo  to 
obtain  Inforraation.  and  t«)  (jive  a<!vlce.  of  tho  utmost  value.  You  will  be  able  t*j 
trace  hidden  tJ"easure;  to  find  lost  friends,  animals,  and  property:  and  so  on. 

With  Clalrvcyance  can  also  be  oft«n  developed  Clalraudienoe  (or  Spiritual 
Hserlnn). 

Crjst.iJ  Gating  means  looking  Into  a  crystal  (a  glaiis  egg)  or  Into  poraething  else 
of  a  lD;e  kind.  If  yuu  have  developtxl  tiie  faculty,  yt^u  will,  after  a  sh:)rt  time,  s^e 
form,  apprjiiilly  In  v.hat  you  ore  l'-H>klin?  Into,  a  picture.  This  picture  wi'l  in  all 
pn>babi':lty  have  rcfoTKico  to  tho  past,  present,  or  future  either  of  y^^rsclf  or  of 
tho  jierson  far  whom  you  aro  pracilsin,;.  Presently  tho  picture  will  dissolve  and  dis- 
appear; when  anoihrr  will  take  It.s  ilace;  and  so  on. 

"CLURVOYANrH   .VXD   CUYSTAL  UVZlNfi'   c  vee   yu   full  partlculara   as   to 
how  you  laay  develop  tlmao  marvelcus  and  invaluable  i»>wcrs. 
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Vol.  5  (Cjmplcte). 

TABLE  RAPPING  AND  AUT03IATIC 
^VRITING. 

"If  a  man  die,  shall  he  live  a«ain?"  Di-k^s  death  end  all;  or  Is  it  merely  "the 
gate  of  lifol"  And  if  there  be  a  next  world,  can  we  coimuunicato  with  tliosa  that 
are  In   it? 

'ni~!o  RTo  qucstlfins  that  have  afitatod  tho  minds  of  millions. 

"TAIiLH  RArPI.VG  A.VU  ArTO.M.VTIi"  \nUTtNG"  answers  the  cuwtlons  In 
tho  anirmatlvo.  Hut  it  rio«s  more.  It  tells  you  h  w  you  can  nn.iwer  thi-m  in  the 
aiUrmaiivo.  It  tells  yo'j  how  you  can  prove  th.at  tliero  is  aroihor  life,  ani  how  y.u 
can  opeci  up  communication  wlih  those  tJiat  dwell  therein.  To  the  MateriaLst  it 
says:      "Relief  H  unioccssary.     You   demand  eviricnco — hers  It   U." 

"TABLH  R.fVPPING   AVI>    AtTfyjfATIC  \^^{1T1^•G■'   glvee   fuli   Instructions   h  w 

to  form   a  Crcle  for  rw-c'vlng  mes-^pyes  from   spirit    friemd.-";  h->w   to   onr.b:o  spirits 

to    moke    themselves    t1»:1>1o    to    onllnarj-    .sj^ht     ("Materl'iUrntim"!  :    how    to    R-t 

written  messages,  drawings,   etc.,   fi>>m  those   that  have   "pnised  over;"   and  so  on. 

Send  for  this  Book  at  onc«.    Price  30  cents. 

Vol.  6  (Complafc:). 

HOW  TO  CON  VERS  I]  AVITH  SPIRIT 
FRIENDS. 

This  valuable  \y~ok  gonn  st'll  further  Into  tho  subjects  dealt  with  in  "Table  Rap- 
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.\  medium  is  a  poisisji  wlk^se  [ire.ionre  Is  n<r-cssary  before  a  spirit  can  c^m- 
numlcatp.  "HOW  TO  O-Wh^sE  WITH  .'sriltlT  FKIEND.'^"  tells  >iiu  how  yi-u 
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Tlin  b.K>k  also  tcll.s  y.'u  alx'ut  tUffert'nt  kinds  of  spirits.  Including  apparitions 
("ghosts")  and  .iiV.nt  (nillcs  (tlin  spirit  friends  that  ari>  constantly  «i;h  each  of 
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